It’s a day on the ice in NW Wisconsin in search of record breaking Esox Lucius this week. The idiosyncrasies of the pine highway and the lore of Tiberius and Raul.
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The post Tumblehome: A Boundary Waters Podcast – Tiberius and Raul Classic appeared first on Clearwater Outfitters.
Episode Transcript
[0:00:35 – 0:00:39] Adam: Welcome to Tumble Home.
[0:00:40 – 0:00:44] Adam: Special report in the field.
[0:00:45 – 0:00:50] Adam: We’re coming to you live from the Tiberius and Raul Classic 14.
[0:00:50 – 0:00:58] Adam: It is currently January 19th, 2019.
[0:00:58 – 0:01:03] Adam: I am here at the lake with the founder of this great event,
[0:01:05 – 0:01:05] Adam: The Warden.
[0:01:06 – 0:01:07] Adam: Hello, Warden.
[0:01:07 – 0:01:08] Adam: Morning, Ike.
[0:01:08 – 0:01:09] Adam: How you doing?
[0:01:09 – 0:01:10] Adam: Real good.
[0:01:10 – 0:01:13] Adam: So I think first off, we should just get this out of the way as fishing names.
[0:01:14 – 0:01:17] Adam: You go as the Warden, and I am no longer Adam.
[0:01:17 – 0:01:19] Ike Walter: I am Ike Walter at this event.
[0:01:19 – 0:01:20] Ike Walter: That is correct.
[0:01:20 – 0:01:23] Ike Walter: Those are longstanding names, well-established.
[0:01:23 – 0:01:30] Adam: Yeah, I don’t know when that all started, but it was around the first Tiberius and Raul Classic, a way back when.
[0:01:30 – 0:01:31] Adam: 2007.
[0:01:31 – 0:01:32] Adam: Nailed it, yeah.
[0:01:35 – 0:01:36] Adam: So, yeah, we’re out here.
[0:01:37 – 0:01:38] Adam: It’s pretty cold.
[0:01:38 – 0:01:41] Adam: Typical for the TNR, brutally cold Saturday.
[0:01:42 – 0:01:43] Adam: We just cracked zero degrees.
[0:01:44 – 0:01:45] Ike Walter: Yep, absolutely.
[0:01:45 – 0:01:56] Ike Walter: Saturdays, historically, at the trip, for whatever reason, are always incredibly cold, and this one is no different, although we do have a little bit of sunshine, and at least it’s above zero.
[0:01:57 – 0:01:59] Adam: Yeah, and there’s not too much wind either, so it’s looking pretty good.
[0:01:59 – 0:02:02] Adam: So we’re going to get started on setup here.
[0:02:02 – 0:02:03] Adam: You guys were fishing the last couple days.
[0:02:03 – 0:02:05] Adam: I just joined you last night.
[0:02:05 – 0:02:09] Adam: And so we’re just basically popping open the holes that you guys were using yesterday.
[0:02:10 – 0:02:15] Adam: And we’ll describe the area we were fishing more in detail later in the day.
[0:02:15 – 0:02:17] Adam: But essentially, we’re fishing…
[0:02:17 – 0:02:19] Adam: for a big pike.
[0:02:19 – 0:02:28] Adam: There’s a lot of species out here available, but really the goal of a Tiberius and Raul Classic is to catch Tiberius and or Raul.
[0:02:28 – 0:02:29] Ike Walter: That is correct.
[0:02:29 – 0:02:30] Ike Walter: I mean, we’re swinging for the fences.
[0:02:30 – 0:02:36] Ike Walter: I’d say the baseline goal is we always like to get pike in the 30s, but everybody’s secretly dreaming of that 40-incher.
[0:02:37 – 0:02:46] Adam: Absolutely, and 13 years so far, and halfway through this year’s event, still no 40-inch pike have been cracked, but they are in this lake.
[0:02:46 – 0:02:49] Ike Walter: They are in here, and we’ve got plenty of great fish.
[0:02:49 – 0:02:51] Ike Walter: Trevor has the biggest with a beautiful 36.
[0:02:51 – 0:03:00] Ike Walter: We have multiple 35s and everything down to 30, so we’ve got to get past 36, and even that would be monumentous, but we want to get that 40.
[0:03:01 – 0:03:25] Adam: absolutely uh so we are just to clarify we are in northwestern wisconsin for this special report coming to you live from the great state of wisconsin and so we are allowed three tip-ups per man today so essentially we’re putting out a monster spread of tip-ups trying to cover as much ground as we can and i’ll offer those big pike up some tasty treats we got some nice size bait and so we’re gonna get to set up here and we’ll check back with you in a bit
[0:03:42 – 0:03:48] Adam: Okay, so I’m here with Chinwhisker Charles, who’s, you’ve been to every single Tiberius and Raul Classic.
[0:03:48 – 0:03:49] Ike Walter: Yes, that is correct.
[0:03:49 – 0:03:53] Ike Walter: This is, I’ve been to all of them, so has Bender, and so has Chris Cass.
[0:03:54 – 0:04:00] Adam: Yeah, I missed the first one, which is unfortunate, but I’ve been to the last 13.
[0:04:01 – 0:04:05] Adam: So you were here yesterday, we’re essentially re-popping your holes here.
[0:04:06 – 0:04:09] Adam: You’ve already done so with the Ion battery-powered auger.
[0:04:10 – 0:04:14] Adam: And so you’ve popped a new fresh hole right next to the hole you were using yesterday.
[0:04:14 – 0:04:15] Ike Walter: Correct.
[0:04:15 – 0:04:20] Ike Walter: My strategy on that is even if you re-drill a hole, you might lose some integrity.
[0:04:20 – 0:04:23] Ike Walter: There might be some odd rough chunks.
[0:04:23 – 0:04:25] Ike Walter: The ion auger makes it so easy I prefer to just go fresh.
[0:04:26 – 0:04:27] Adam: Absolutely makes sense.
[0:04:27 – 0:04:30] Adam: And we have the ability to charge those batteries up.
[0:04:30 – 0:04:31] Adam: Did you even recharge it last night?
[0:04:31 – 0:04:31] Ike Walter: I did.
[0:04:32 – 0:04:33] Ike Walter: I put it on the charger, but I probably didn’t need to.
[0:04:34 – 0:04:36] Adam: Yeah, no, so those things are amazing.
[0:04:36 – 0:04:46] Adam: If you haven’t used one, you know, we talk a lot about hand augers on the podcast being in the boundary waters there, but these ions, they’re really something else.
[0:04:47 – 0:04:50] Adam: If you do a lot of ice fishing, they’re pretty great.
[0:04:51 – 0:04:54] Ike Walter: So he’s rolling out a Frable Arctic Fire tip-up.
[0:04:54 – 0:04:58] Adam: That’s basically what I also like to use, and…
[0:04:59 – 0:05:07] Adam: We’ve got a sled full of tip ups and various tools and then one of Warden’s custom bait coolers here.
[0:05:14 – 0:05:16] Adam: He’s going for a big shiner.
[0:05:16 – 0:05:21] Adam: It looks like we got a lot of big shiners and are there some suckers available?
[0:05:22 – 0:05:28] Adam: For BCL I like to use a spangly rig, something with a little bit of flash.
[0:05:29 – 0:05:34] Ike Walter: blade, bead, combination of both.
[0:05:34 – 0:05:37] Ike Walter: They tend to like the fan dangle here on this lake, so I’m gonna give it to them.
[0:05:38 – 0:05:43] Adam: Yeah, and I’m actually a little bejeweled myself with my rigs, but that’s just due to Minnesota rules.
[0:05:43 – 0:05:46] Adam: You need to have some sort of, something that counts as a lure.
[0:05:46 – 0:05:47] Adam: You can’t just have a bare hook.
[0:05:48 – 0:05:50] Adam: So all my rigs are that way these days.
[0:05:51 – 0:05:58] Adam: Yeah, so Ian’s got a little foam covering here for the holes too, because these are gonna be freezing up rather quickly today.
[0:05:58 – 0:05:59] Ike Walter: Correct.
[0:05:59 – 0:06:02] Ike Walter: I’ve used carpet squares, I’ve made my own hole covers.
[0:06:02 – 0:06:05] Ike Walter: Carpet squares freeze to the ice and they just turn to bull .
[0:06:05 – 0:06:09] Ike Walter: So sack up and buy the foam ones from your local fleet farm.
[0:06:09 – 0:06:10] Ike Walter: You’ll be in business.
[0:06:11 – 0:06:13] Adam: That’s some good advice from Chinwhisker Charles.
[0:06:13 – 0:06:14] Adam: This guy’s a real pro’s pro.
[0:06:15 – 0:06:25] Adam: He’s got two Arctic Fires yellow, but then he’s got this old green one with a, it’s got Green Bay Packers duct tape as the flag, and that is the famous Green Machine.
[0:06:25 – 0:06:28] Adam: How many fish has the Green Machine caught in its day?
[0:06:28 – 0:06:31] Ike Walter: Oh man, the Green Machine has caught quite a few fish.
[0:06:31 – 0:06:31] Ike Walter: Hundreds.
[0:06:32 – 0:06:35] Ike Walter: Yeah, I’d say hundreds of fish over a long, illustrious 10-year career.
[0:06:36 – 0:06:37] Ike Walter: Possibly thousands.
[0:06:39 – 0:06:45] Adam: Arrow is chasing us around, like, looking up and checking out all the old minnows from yesterday’s operation.
[0:06:45 – 0:06:46] Adam: Arrow is with us here.
[0:06:46 – 0:06:51] Adam: She’s made her first long car ride and her first trip out of the state of Minnesota.
[0:06:51 – 0:06:55] Adam: And she’s scampering about the old spread here.
[0:06:59 – 0:06:59] Adam: All right, so…
[0:07:08 – 0:07:11] Adam: As I said before, it’s got Green Bay Packers duct tape as the flag nowadays.
[0:07:11 – 0:07:11] Adam: That’s a…
[0:07:14 – 0:07:19] Adam: Yeah, it’s a quality machine, but no flag can handle a decade of ice fishing.
[0:07:20 – 0:07:21] Adam: So those just flags come and go.
[0:07:22 – 0:07:27] Adam: But the general thing here is the unit is looking pretty good, though, overall.
[0:07:27 – 0:07:28] Adam: And this thing is legendary.
[0:07:28 – 0:07:31] Adam: I’ve seen so many fish caught on this green tip-up.
[0:07:31 – 0:07:34] Adam: So I assume this is the hole the green machine was in yesterday?
[0:07:34 – 0:07:35] Ike Walter: Correct, yeah.
[0:07:35 – 0:07:41] Ike Walter: In fact, she was really badly frozen up when I set her yesterday, and I thought I was going to have to pull it.
[0:07:41 – 0:07:46] Ike Walter: and I had the replacement tip up in my hand and I went out of the shanty and it was up and we caught a fish.
[0:07:46 – 0:07:47] Ike Walter: A nice fish, 29 incher.
[0:07:48 – 0:07:51] Ike Walter: Then right after that it went up again and we caught another fish there.
[0:07:52 – 0:07:58] Ike Walter: Even if it doesn’t pull cleanly, I mean it’s going to be, as long as it continues to catch fish, that’s all you really need.
[0:07:59 – 0:08:00] Adam: Absolutely.
[0:08:00 – 0:08:02] Adam: You can see there’s blood all over frozen the ice here.
[0:08:04 – 0:08:04] Adam: It looks like some weeds.
[0:08:05 – 0:08:06] Adam: You must be a little shallow.
[0:08:06 – 0:08:07] Adam: You’re on the edge here.
[0:08:07 – 0:08:08] Ike Walter: About five feet right here.
[0:08:08 – 0:08:10] Adam: Oh yeah, you’re right on the edge of the transition.
[0:08:11 – 0:08:13] Adam: Yeah, most of this lake’s pretty shallow.
[0:08:13 – 0:08:17] Adam: We are kind of out on this spot that we’ve just termed the gap.
[0:08:17 – 0:08:21] Adam: It’s a bit of a mild canyon compared to everything around it.
[0:08:21 – 0:08:26] Adam: It’s very shallow and weedy, and then there’s this one little narrows here where it gets down to like 14 feet.
[0:08:27 – 0:08:38] Adam: But the real key, we’ll be jigging in the 14-foot hole, but the real key on this spot is you just want to be on the edge of that transition where it goes from the shallow weed flat down into this, you know, like I said, it’s 14 feet.
[0:08:38 – 0:08:39] Adam: It’s not exactly…
[0:08:41 – 0:08:45] Adam: Super deep, but compared to everything else in the lake and what we’re near, it is incredibly deep.
[0:08:46 – 0:08:52] Adam: And so that just attracts a lot of panfish and baitfish and in turn, the big piker in here.
[0:08:52 – 0:08:55] Adam: We will also run into some largemouth bass.
[0:08:55 – 0:09:05] Adam: And this lake has also been known to produce the occasional bowfin, which is a native ancient species you don’t see up in Minnesota, but they’re a very pretty and cool fish.
[0:09:06 – 0:09:09] Adam: Very intimidating looking with the sharp teeth, so.
[0:09:09 – 0:09:26] Adam: but the king of this lake here is the pike and it shouldn’t be long now before we we pop us a flag here um this is usually uh we will usually get a setup flag while we’re deploying so uh we’re gonna get that’s two in for chin whisker charles we got one more
[0:09:27 – 0:09:29] Adam: It looks like you’re going even shallower with that third one.
[0:09:29 – 0:09:30] Ike Walter: Three-footer next.
[0:09:30 – 0:09:32] Ike Walter: And what was the first one over here?
[0:09:32 – 0:09:35] Ike Walter: That was about like 11 or 12 feet right there.
[0:09:35 – 0:09:40] Adam: We’re pretty tightly packed here, so we’re going like 11 to 5 to 3 real quick going up the hill here.
[0:09:40 – 0:09:46] Adam: So we’re going to get that last one in, and then I’m going to put down the boom mic here and get my tip-ups going.
[0:09:46 – 0:09:47] Adam: We’ll check back soon.
[0:09:51 – 0:09:53] Adam: Okay, we have a fishery port.
[0:09:53 – 0:09:57] Adam: Mitch just plucked a small pike from the far side of the spread over there.
[0:09:58 – 0:10:03] Adam: We’re currently working our way out to the south here and east.
[0:10:03 – 0:10:05] Adam: I got one in now and I got two to go.
[0:10:06 – 0:10:07] Adam: We are on the board officially.
[0:10:07 – 0:10:10] Adam: So I’m here with Trevor and he’s got this Ion Power Auger.
[0:10:10 – 0:10:11] Adam: It’s incredible.
[0:10:11 – 0:10:12] Adam: Let’s see what this thing can do.
[0:10:12 – 0:10:14] Ike Walter: Here’s what it sounds like.
[0:10:36 – 0:10:37] Adam: Holy moly.
[0:10:40 – 0:10:48] Adam: All right, so you can basically then just, like, kick the slush away from the hole, and then you plunge it in reverse?
[0:10:48 – 0:10:52] Ike Walter: It’s got a reverse function for flushing slush, so you hit the reverse button and turn it on.
[0:11:00 – 0:11:00] Adam: And clean.
[0:11:01 – 0:11:02] Adam: No real scooping needed.
[0:11:02 – 0:11:03] Adam: We have a tip-up.
[0:11:05 – 0:11:08] Adam: Warden’s got a black flag up in the middle of the spread.
[0:11:14 – 0:11:18] Adam: So that’s like three or four flags already, and I’m not even close to set up.
[0:11:18 – 0:11:19] Adam: This is pretty good.
[0:11:20 – 0:11:26] Adam: Typical as you’re setting up action, I think setting them up definitely stirs the fish up a little.
[0:11:28 – 0:11:33] Adam: It looks like he’s got nothing going over there.
[0:11:34 – 0:11:35] Ike Walter: Okay.
[0:11:37 – 0:11:41] Adam: All right.
[0:11:41 – 0:11:41] Adam: Oh, wow.
[0:11:41 – 0:11:42] Adam: That’s a nice fish.
[0:11:42 – 0:11:42] Adam: Oh, God.
[0:11:44 – 0:11:45] Adam: Bender’s got something nice here.
[0:11:45 – 0:11:45] Adam: Holy.
[0:11:46 – 0:11:47] Ike Walter: Oh, no.
[0:11:48 – 0:11:49] Ike Walter: Oh, my God.
[0:11:49 – 0:11:50] Ike Walter: Wow.
[0:11:50 – 0:11:52] Adam: Wow.
[0:11:52 – 0:11:53] Adam: Oh, boy.
[0:11:54 – 0:11:56] Adam: That is the biggest fish of the trip.
[0:11:56 – 0:11:57] Ike Walter: That’s going to be 36, I think.
[0:11:59 – 0:11:59] Adam: Do we?
[0:12:00 – 0:12:01] Adam: Holy shit.
[0:12:01 – 0:12:01] Adam: Woo.
[0:12:03 – 0:12:04] Adam: We got the tape out.
[0:12:04 – 0:12:05] Ike Walter: Okay, go ahead.
[0:12:05 – 0:12:06] Ike Walter: That’s a healthy.
[0:12:12 – 0:12:12] Ike Walter: 37!
[0:12:13 – 0:12:15] Adam: It’s a new T&R record!
[0:12:16 – 0:12:17] Adam: We’re here!
[0:12:22 – 0:12:29] Adam: Bender has just beaten the T&R, the longest standing record, 37 inch northern pike.
[0:12:29 – 0:12:30] Adam: How does it feel?
[0:12:31 – 0:12:36] Adam: When you least expect it, you get them to drop them in and you see what comes out.
[0:12:38 – 0:12:39] Adam: It’s a really beautiful fish.
[0:12:39 – 0:12:41] Adam: We’re gonna get some nice pictures here.
[0:12:42 – 0:12:47] Adam: Warden is down here de-hooking this butte.
[0:12:47 – 0:12:50] Adam: I’m gonna put down the recorder and get some pictures.
[0:12:50 – 0:12:51] Adam: This is an amazing fish.
[0:13:20 – 0:13:23] Ike Walter: Well, we’ve missed a few.
[0:13:23 – 0:13:23] Adam: Okay.
[0:13:24 – 0:13:27] Adam: It’s noon, and we’re here with an update.
[0:13:27 – 0:13:32] Adam: It’s noon in California.
[0:13:32 – 0:13:34] Adam: Fact checker on the fly over here.
[0:13:34 – 0:13:35] Adam: I guess it’s 2 o’clock.
[0:13:36 – 0:13:37] Adam: What was I looking at?
[0:13:37 – 0:13:38] Adam: 3, 2, 1.
[0:13:38 – 0:13:39] Adam: It’s 2.30.
[0:13:39 – 0:13:40] Adam: 3, 2, 1.
[0:13:47 – 0:14:10] Adam: all right it’s 2 30 in the afternoon we’re out here in the boardroom shanty and uh we’re we’re here with an update we’re up to eight fish on the day including bender’s monstrous record-breaking 37-inch isosh lucious a beautiful pike and we will have pictures oh the pictures and and the videos something else
[0:14:11 – 0:14:16] Adam: We’re currently posted up here in the big shanty, getting a little midday warm-up.
[0:14:16 – 0:14:23] Adam: The sun is out and the wind is pretty calm, so despite the frigid temperatures, it’s been fairly nice out here.
[0:14:24 – 0:14:40] Adam: I’m joined in the shanty, of course, by Bender and Trevor, Chinwhisker Charles, Mitch, and our friend, the warden, who is our gracious host here on BCL and the…
[0:14:41 – 0:14:45] Adam: The originator of the Tiberius and Raul classic.
[0:14:47 – 0:14:51] Adam: So our base camp of operations here on the lake is the Pipsawa II.
[0:14:51 – 0:14:59] Adam: What can you tell us about the Pipsawa I and how we came to be here on this fine northwest Wisconsin lake?
[0:15:00 – 0:15:00] Ike Walter: Yeah, absolutely.
[0:15:00 – 0:15:01] Ike Walter: Thanks, Ike.
[0:15:01 – 0:15:06] Ike Walter: So the Pipsawa I was originally in the 50s.
[0:15:06 – 0:15:09] Ike Walter: My great-grandparents, Merrill and Norma,
[0:15:10 – 0:15:12] Ike Walter: owned property on the Namakagan River.
[0:15:14 – 0:15:17] Ike Walter: It was a log cabin, and they called it the Pipsua.
[0:15:17 – 0:15:31] Ike Walter: And they had this from the mid-’50s until I think 1968 or 69 when the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act went through, and the Namakagan and the St. Croix system were one of the first to fall as part of that.
[0:15:31 – 0:15:33] Ike Walter: So they had a choice of either…
[0:15:34 – 0:15:58] Ike Walter: selling the house to the government or my grandma could have uh my great-grandma could have kept it and then when she died as far as we knew then it would not you would not have been able to pass it down so they took they sold it at that time um but when when they would come to the river they would always come out to the lake we’re on now is like a day trip and uh in 1990
[0:16:01 – 0:16:15] Ike Walter: My grandparents found some land over here and were able to buy it and that is how the Pipsua II came after about 22 years of not being in the area.
[0:16:16 – 0:16:22] Adam: It’s a beautiful property here in the Jack Pines, and I think we can say we’re in Washburn County.
[0:16:23 – 0:16:25] Adam: The Namakagan River reference probably gave it away.
[0:16:27 – 0:16:34] Adam: But, yeah, you’re up around the north shore of the lake, and it’s a really fun trip because we can just come here and hang out at this beautiful cabin.
[0:16:34 – 0:16:45] Adam: Your family has started, and now you have taken the reins of, and just fish to our heart’s content, and then, you know, head back to the cabin at night for,
[0:16:46 – 0:17:14] Ike Walter: game of cards or what have you correct we uh we we try to strongly hold to the fact that when we get to the pipsua 2 for this trip we do not leave other than to go out ice fishing on the lake so um ike you mentioned jack pine it’s actually very the uh critical reason why we have this is there was a forest fire in 1980 which burned down the original property so it was kind of like in uh it was a vacant lot that my grandparents were able to buy
[0:17:15 – 0:17:17] Ike Walter: And my grandparents owned it until 1996.
[0:17:17 – 0:17:19] Ike Walter: Then my parents took it over.
[0:17:19 – 0:17:25] Ike Walter: And then my parents sold it to my wife, Stephanie, and I just April 20th of this year.
[0:17:26 – 0:17:28] Adam: Yeah, and that’s amazing for you guys.
[0:17:28 – 0:17:29] Adam: Congratulations.
[0:17:29 – 0:17:32] Adam: It’s a wonderful thing that you’re able to have us all here.
[0:17:33 – 0:17:39] Adam: And we’ve been able to visit the original Pipsawa site, and you know where that is, on the river.
[0:17:39 – 0:17:40] Adam: Absolutely.
[0:17:40 – 0:17:47] Adam: And we also do, we have in the past on river trips, you guys are more regular on the riverside.
[0:17:48 – 0:17:53] Adam: But the Namakagan River and the St. Croix River is a very beautiful national treasure, I would say.
[0:17:53 – 0:17:56] Adam: It’s very nearby, and that’s where the original cabin was.
[0:17:57 – 0:17:57] Ike Walter: Absolutely.
[0:17:58 – 0:18:02] Ike Walter: So the Namakagan River, I will say, without fail, is my absolute favorite place in the world.
[0:18:03 – 0:18:05] Ike Walter: Zero questions asked.
[0:18:05 – 0:18:23] Ike Walter: So the fact that my great-grandparents had to sell the house because the government took it over, yeah, that seems like a bad thing, but now here we are years later, and it’s still just untouched, and it really is a treasure.
[0:18:23 – 0:18:24] Ike Walter: You’re right.
[0:18:24 – 0:18:25] Adam: Yeah, absolutely.
[0:18:25 – 0:18:30] Adam: Anybody who enjoys the Boundary Waters, I think, would love taking a trip on the Namakagan.
[0:18:30 – 0:18:31] Adam: It’s a very similar thing.
[0:18:32 – 0:18:39] Adam: For most of the time you’re on the river, you will see no evidence of humankind whatsoever, other than the occasional kayaker.
[0:18:40 – 0:18:40] Ike Walter: Correct.
[0:18:40 – 0:18:49] Ike Walter: And the one nice thing about it, even if you see a bunch of drunk kayakers, it’s because the river current is two to four miles an hour, so it’s like a one-way street.
[0:18:50 – 0:18:52] Ike Walter: As long as you let them pass you, they’re not coming back.
[0:18:52 – 0:18:53] Ike Walter: So… Yeah.
[0:18:54 – 0:19:03] Adam: And there’s a remote campsite set up along the way, and you can really get out there and spend, you guys do a week every fall, which is incredible.
[0:19:03 – 0:19:10] Adam: And I think it’s one of those things that not a lot of people know about it, and that’s really something to check out.
[0:19:11 – 0:19:12] Ike Walter: Yeah, absolutely.
[0:19:12 – 0:19:13] Ike Walter: It really is a treasure.
[0:19:13 – 0:19:18] Ike Walter: And a lot of time, a lot of the people kayaking it are just like, oh, it’s so beautiful to kayak it.
[0:19:18 – 0:19:21] Ike Walter: And we are always like, well, why don’t you stop and fish for a second?
[0:19:21 – 0:19:22] Ike Walter: It’s world-class fishing.
[0:19:22 – 0:19:26] Ike Walter: Yeah, stop and fish or maybe stop and camp for a night, not just day trip it.
[0:19:27 – 0:19:30] Adam: So, anyways, that’s how we’ve ended up here on this beautiful lake.
[0:19:31 – 0:19:35] Adam: And this is our 14th year of coming up and doing this every January.
[0:19:36 – 0:19:38] Adam: And it’s usually really cold.
[0:19:38 – 0:19:39] Adam: There’s plenty of ice.
[0:19:39 – 0:19:42] Adam: And we just catch a ton of fish out here.
[0:19:44 – 0:19:48] Adam: You know, we’ve talked about, like, the historical record today of the 37-incher.
[0:19:48 – 0:19:50] Adam: And you’ve said maybe Grandpa caught some bigger ones.
[0:19:52 – 0:19:59] Adam: We are of the impression that this lake can support a 40 inch plus pike and that’s kind of the whole point of the trip.
[0:19:59 – 0:20:05] Adam: What can you just tell us about since the cabin has been here and the fishing, what are we expecting here on BCL?
[0:20:05 – 0:20:15] Ike Walter: Yeah, so obviously we do lots of summer fishing, and any of these legacy pike that my dad talks about that my grandpa caught were all— I love the term legacy pike, but that’s a beautiful term.
[0:20:15 – 0:20:26] Ike Walter: And in the early 90s up here with my grandpa, me and my cousin Brendan came out, Silly Dean came out, and grandpa battled for two or three days to get this pike, and he finally caught it.
[0:20:26 – 0:20:27] Ike Walter: Wow, it was only 31.
[0:20:28 – 0:20:30] Ike Walter: Well, 31 is a beautiful pike, but— Only 31?
[0:20:30 – 0:20:30] Ike Walter: Yeah.
[0:20:31 – 0:20:33] Ike Walter: But in summer, the bigger ones are hard to catch.
[0:20:33 – 0:20:41] Ike Walter: My brother, Andy, has caught a really nice 34-incher in summer, but largely all our big pike come through the ice.
[0:20:41 – 0:20:44] Ike Walter: Over the years, now today, we have Benders 37.
[0:20:45 – 0:20:52] Ike Walter: Trevor, for years, had a beautiful 36 that held a long-time record holder with a really nice 36.
[0:20:52 – 0:20:55] Ike Walter: We’ve caught multiple 35s, 34, 33, 32, all the way down.
[0:20:57 – 0:20:58] Ike Walter: And we got a flag.
[0:20:58 – 0:20:58] Ike Walter: Who’s up?
[0:20:58 – 0:21:01] Ike Walter: All right, so that’ll be a good time to wrap it up.
[0:21:01 – 0:21:01] Adam: Who is up?
[0:21:03 – 0:21:03] Ike Walter: Not me.
[0:21:03 – 0:21:03] Ike Walter: I skipped me.
[0:21:03 – 0:21:04] Ike Walter: Who’s after Mitch?
[0:21:04 – 0:21:05] Ike Walter: I think you’re up.
[0:21:05 – 0:21:05] Ike Walter: I’m up.
[0:21:05 – 0:21:06] Ike Walter: Okay, we got to go.
[0:21:06 – 0:21:07] Ike Walter: We got to go.
[0:21:07 – 0:21:08] Ike Walter: All right, flag up.
[0:21:13 – 0:21:14] Adam: Okay, diving right back in.
[0:21:15 – 0:21:17] Adam: Pip Sawa history part two.
[0:21:18 – 0:21:20] Adam: That was a dud of a flag.
[0:21:20 – 0:21:27] Adam: We’re gonna quick report that, and I think we said it earlier, but we are up to eight fish total on probably 14 or 15 attempts.
[0:21:28 – 0:21:30] Adam: That would make it eight for 16.
[0:21:30 – 0:21:33] Adam: We’re batting about 500 today, which is pretty standard.
[0:21:33 – 0:21:35] Adam: Pretty good day, I would say.
[0:21:37 – 0:21:41] Adam: So anyways, we were talking history
[0:21:42 – 0:21:44] Ike Walter: Yeah, of the original Pipsil 1 and 2.
[0:21:45 – 0:21:54] Ike Walter: I think an important note is that, so the Pipsil 1, on the Namakagan River, they would day trip over here to this lake.
[0:21:54 – 0:21:56] Ike Walter: And now we do the opposite.
[0:21:56 – 0:22:08] Ike Walter: We have the cabin, the Pipsil 2 here, and now we go to the site of the Pipsil 1, and we will walk into the Namakagan River and do day trips up to what we call the Pike Hole, which is one of the Namakagan River’s…
[0:22:09 – 0:22:32] Ike Walter: greatest fishing spots it’s uh kind of a little at the at the end of an oxbow and it gets to about well depending on the water level anywhere from six to ten feet and uh it’s just a magical little place and we walk up there in this yeah you’ve taken me there once and uh we will put the gps coordinates to that in the show notes under the link for legal notices yeah
[0:22:32 – 0:22:35] Ike Walter: So now that you’ve listened this far, you will get that link.
[0:22:36 – 0:22:37] Ike Walter: And there is an amazing thing there.
[0:22:37 – 0:22:41] Ike Walter: As I said, the Namakagan is probably my favorite place in the world.
[0:22:41 – 0:22:49] Ike Walter: What we do is you, in the summer, on a hot July day, you walk up to the pike hole against the current, fish for several hours, and then…
[0:22:50 – 0:22:59] Ike Walter: If you, when you’re done fishing, you just kick your feet up and let the river take you, and then if you put your head underwater so it covers your ears, it is like you’re floating.
[0:22:59 – 0:23:05] Ike Walter: It is the most amazing experience you can have other than catching a giant fish at the pike hole.
[0:23:05 – 0:23:13] Adam: Like a giant pike through the ice, perhaps, or a giant muskie out of the pike hole, or Lord have you, a sturgeon even, maybe.
[0:23:13 – 0:23:14] Adam: Yep.
[0:23:14 – 0:23:18] Ike Walter: Namakagan, place Ojibwa for, I believe, place…
[0:23:19 – 0:23:23] Ike Walter: Place at the River of Many Sturgeon or something of this type.
[0:23:24 – 0:23:28] Ike Walter: That could be fact-checked in history, and we’ve confirmed that over the years.
[0:23:28 – 0:23:29] Ike Walter: There’s lots of sturgeon.
[0:23:29 – 0:23:31] Adam: Call us up on the Fact Checker hotline on that one.
[0:23:31 – 0:23:35] Adam: The number for the Fact Checker hotline will also be in the show notes.
[0:23:37 – 0:23:44] Adam: Um, so yeah, it’s a pretty incredible place up here and it’s a weird thing now where, um, you know, we’ve been doing this a long time together.
[0:23:44 – 0:23:52] Adam: It’s like always going up north and I live way up in Minnesota, like driving south to come here and it’s still brutally cold and very much winter.
[0:23:52 – 0:23:53] Adam: It’s a…
[0:23:53 – 0:24:12] Adam: it’s a lovely place i really enjoy the washburn county area the river these lakes around here especially this lake and every year we seem to have just amazing action here uh so you know it’s what is it how does it feel to like think about it in the long term that we’ve been doing this for 14 years now
[0:24:13 – 0:24:21] Ike Walter: Yeah, I mean, it’s really kind of crazy because we didn’t really have a history of ice fishing of this lake.
[0:24:21 – 0:24:24] Ike Walter: So we kind of said, hey, why are we not ice fishing here?
[0:24:24 – 0:24:25] Ike Walter: Let’s try this.
[0:24:26 – 0:24:30] Ike Walter: And it’s turned into one of the most important annual trips we do.
[0:24:30 – 0:24:35] Ike Walter: So 14 years, TNR 10 was fairly significant, and here we are.
[0:24:35 – 0:24:37] Ike Walter: We’re almost to 15.
[0:24:37 – 0:24:41] Adam: Yeah, we made t-shirts for the TNR 10, and next year will be the 15.
[0:24:41 – 0:24:43] Adam: So I think another round of t-shirts is in order.
[0:24:43 – 0:24:52] Adam: The t-shirt features all of the major events slash big fish caught each year and the actual specific dates of each trip.
[0:24:52 – 0:24:57] Adam: and then some good graphics of Tiberius and Raul themselves.
[0:24:57 – 0:25:05] Adam: So we’re going to keep fishing, and we will be sitting out a little bit later trying for the crappie jigging bite, which is an added-on feature.
[0:25:06 – 0:25:08] Ike Walter: A wonderful add-on feature of the trip.
[0:25:08 – 0:25:11] Ike Walter: Crappie fishing out on this lake is always great.
[0:25:11 – 0:25:14] Ike Walter: In the summer, they’re really fun to jig up.
[0:25:15 – 0:25:22] Ike Walter: And then we discovered in winter, right around sunset and for the hour after, all of a sudden they’ll just start.
[0:25:22 – 0:25:28] Ike Walter: We all have these fan-dangled depth finders and rigs, gizmos, chunchis.
[0:25:29 – 0:25:33] Ike Walter: And one year, we tried it out, and we saw them move in on the depth finders.
[0:25:33 – 0:25:35] Ike Walter: We started catching crappie, and we’ve become addicted.
[0:25:35 – 0:25:36] Ike Walter: It’s so fun.
[0:25:36 – 0:25:37] Ike Walter: Last night, we caught what?
[0:25:38 – 0:25:39] Ike Walter: Yeah, you guys slayed it.
[0:25:39 – 0:25:40] Ike Walter: Ten minutes.
[0:25:40 – 0:25:41] Ike Walter: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[0:25:41 – 0:25:47] Ike Walter: So we have anywhere from like they were eight to what was the biggest, ten and a half?
[0:25:47 – 0:25:49] Ike Walter: No, we caught some bigger than that last night.
[0:25:49 – 0:25:51] Ike Walter: Yeah, I thought you had a foot long.
[0:25:52 – 0:25:52] Ike Walter: Yeah.
[0:25:52 – 0:25:54] Adam: So, you know, there’s a lot to offer here.
[0:25:55 – 0:26:01] Adam: So we’re going to, we’ll definitely check back with you on the crappie bite later, how the tip up spread is sparing.
[0:26:02 – 0:26:10] Adam: And for sure, we’re going to dive into the biggest fish caught at the trip, not just the record holder today, but lots of nice fish over the years.
[0:26:11 – 0:26:13] Adam: We’re going to try and go into the history of the event a little bit.
[0:26:15 – 0:26:16] Adam: You know, I just think it’s a great thing.
[0:26:18 – 0:26:21] Adam: The annual event aspect of it is something you do every year.
[0:26:21 – 0:26:22] Adam: It’s like a pilgrimage.
[0:26:22 – 0:26:24] Adam: We can all get together again.
[0:26:24 – 0:26:26] Adam: You know, we all used to get to hang out a lot more.
[0:26:26 – 0:26:27] Ike Walter: Correct.
[0:26:27 – 0:26:30] Adam: And now it’s like the one time a year that we for sure get to see each other.
[0:26:30 – 0:26:31] Ike Walter: At least we know that.
[0:26:31 – 0:26:31] Ike Walter: Correct.
[0:26:31 – 0:26:32] Adam: And that you can count on.
[0:26:33 – 0:26:36] Adam: And that’s what really truly makes the Pipsawa special.
[0:26:36 – 0:26:38] Adam: And that’s what Pipsawa means to me, at least.
[0:26:39 – 0:26:40] Ike Walter: No, I agree.
[0:26:40 – 0:26:42] Adam: Oh, we got trapped.
[0:26:42 – 0:26:43] Adam: We got trapped.
[0:26:43 – 0:26:45] Adam: All right.
[0:26:46 – 0:26:48] Adam: So we’re going to hit on all these things later.
[0:26:48 – 0:26:52] Adam: There’s a lot more to talk about when it relates to the Tiberius and Raoul classic.
[0:27:39 – 0:27:40] Adam: No running or yelling.
[0:27:40 – 0:27:42] Adam: Okay, so let this be a lesson.
[0:27:42 – 0:27:45] Adam: And when you’re ice fishing, there’s two things you can do.
[0:27:46 – 0:27:47] Adam: It’s run or yell.
[0:27:52 – 0:27:55] Adam: Unless there’s a flag up and you’re up.
[0:27:55 – 0:27:58] Adam: Otherwise, no excuse for running or yelling.
[0:27:58 – 0:27:59] Adam: That’s grounds for a misdemeanor.
[0:28:00 – 0:28:03] Adam: At least a misdemeanor if you’ve been good.
[0:28:03 – 0:28:04] Adam: So just keep that in mind.
[0:28:08 – 0:28:14] Adam: When we’re out ice fishing in a big group like this, as I mentioned before, you get three lines per person
[0:28:15 – 0:28:20] Adam: And so with just having five people out here, we have 15 tip-ups spread out over the lake.
[0:28:21 – 0:28:25] Adam: And we’ve developed this system over the years.
[0:28:26 – 0:28:27] Adam: It’s always evolving.
[0:28:27 – 0:28:29] Adam: I would say it’s a living document.
[0:28:29 – 0:28:31] Adam: It’s the Pine Highway.
[0:28:32 – 0:28:36] Adam: Warden, can you take us back and how this all came to be?
[0:28:37 – 0:28:38] Adam: And it’s our primary system.
[0:28:38 – 0:28:39] Adam: We always use it.
[0:28:40 – 0:28:42] Adam: It’s the best way to fish in a group.
[0:28:43 – 0:28:45] Adam: And it’s very productive and good action for all.
[0:28:46 – 0:28:47] Adam: Where did it all start?
[0:28:48 – 0:28:48] Ike Walter: Yeah, thanks again, Ike.
[0:28:49 – 0:28:57] Ike Walter: Okay, so if we go back historically, I think it has something to do with the fact, or this might be not a fact, but that… No, it’s a rock fact.
[0:28:58 – 0:28:59] Ike Walter: Okay, correct.
[0:28:59 – 0:29:03] Ike Walter: That tip-ups are made of pine, but I don’t know if they actually are.
[0:29:03 – 0:29:04] Ike Walter: And I think one time…
[0:29:06 – 0:29:24] Ike Walter: If you were up next, we said, well, you’re riding the Pine Highway, and it kind of stuck, and we just developed this nice democratic system where you establish an order, and every flag that goes, you get your chance, and then the next guy gets their chance, and so on and so forth.
[0:29:25 – 0:29:33] Ike Walter: But over the years, there’s all sorts of different things that come into running a successful Pine Highway, if you will.
[0:29:33 – 0:29:34] Ike Walter: Right, right.
[0:29:37 – 0:29:46] Ike Walter: There are many idiosyncrasies or things you can do with it, but ultimately the final arbitrator of anything done in a Pine Highway setting are your peers.
[0:29:47 – 0:29:48] Ike Walter: You will always be judged by your peers.
[0:29:49 – 0:29:53] Adam: Thank you, Channel Whisker Charles, for the important point on the peer judgment.
[0:29:54 – 0:29:55] Adam: And that is our statement there.
[0:29:55 – 0:29:57] Adam: You will always be judged by your peers.
[0:29:57 – 0:30:02] Ike Walter: It is, in fact, the most important part of a Pine Highway system.
[0:30:03 – 0:30:04] Ike Walter: Quick example, if you will.
[0:30:05 – 0:30:05] Ike Walter: Absolutely.
[0:30:05 – 0:30:06] Ike Walter: Let’s hear it.
[0:30:06 – 0:30:06] Ike Walter: Okay.
[0:30:06 – 0:30:08] Ike Walter: Would be, let’s say a flag pops.
[0:30:09 – 0:30:16] Ike Walter: A man approaches, a man or woman approaches Flagg and goes, hmm, I think this is just a feisty shiner.
[0:30:16 – 0:30:18] Adam: Right, like we just put this out.
[0:30:18 – 0:30:19] Adam: It’s a huge shiner.
[0:30:19 – 0:30:19] Adam: Right.
[0:30:20 – 0:30:21] Adam: We just set the trap.
[0:30:21 – 0:30:21] Adam: Right.
[0:30:21 – 0:30:24] Adam: Likely that it’s just the minnow being a little, you know.
[0:30:25 – 0:30:25] Ike Walter: Correct.
[0:30:26 – 0:30:31] Ike Walter: So if the person who was responsible for that flag says, you know what, guys, I think this is Feisty Shiner.
[0:30:31 – 0:30:34] Ike Walter: I’d like to not call that an official Fisher flag.
[0:30:35 – 0:30:39] Ike Walter: You can do that, but you will be judged by your peers.
[0:30:39 – 0:30:41] Adam: Right, because everybody can see how much line was out.
[0:30:41 – 0:30:41] Ike Walter: Correct.
[0:30:41 – 0:30:47] Ike Walter: So if you were, you know, most of the time, if you make the right call, your peers will judge.
[0:30:47 – 0:30:49] Ike Walter: Like, yeah, that’s absolutely just a bait.
[0:30:49 – 0:30:50] Ike Walter: You’re still up.
[0:30:50 – 0:30:56] Adam: Yeah, if you come up to one and there’s no line out, it’s a big bait, you know, that’s obviously just a…
[0:30:57 – 0:30:59] Ike Walter: If you call it wrong, your friends will call you a bunch of…
[0:30:59 – 0:31:00] Ike Walter: They’ll call you a dick.
[0:31:00 – 0:31:02] Ike Walter: I’m like, no, no, that was a fish.
[0:31:02 – 0:31:04] Ike Walter: We’re judging you accordingly.
[0:31:05 – 0:31:10] Ike Walter: I think, you know, over the years, too, like, mostly we just pass unless it was, like, really obviously not a fish.
[0:31:10 – 0:31:11] Ike Walter: Correct.
[0:31:11 – 0:31:12] Ike Walter: If there’s any indication…
[0:31:12 – 0:31:13] Ike Walter: Right, this would be…
[0:31:13 – 0:31:19] Ike Walter: There’s a system that also develops in high action days called a flag is a flag is a flag.
[0:31:19 – 0:31:19] Adam: That’s the next level.
[0:31:20 – 0:31:23] Ike Walter: Yeah, so that is where you kind of…
[0:31:23 – 0:31:25] Ike Walter: If a flag is… Oh, is she crawling under?
[0:31:25 – 0:31:29] Ike Walter: Okay, if that system’s in place, then you just keep going through the rotation.
[0:31:29 – 0:31:31] Ike Walter: Like, if you have so many…
[0:31:31 – 0:31:35] Ike Walter: Even if it’s a blatant minnow trip.
[0:31:35 – 0:31:37] Adam: Or just the wind blew the flag up.
[0:31:37 – 0:31:38] Ike Walter: Right.
[0:31:38 – 0:31:38] Ike Walter: It’s a flag.
[0:31:39 – 0:31:39] Ike Walter: It counted.
[0:31:40 – 0:31:43] Adam: So, yeah, you have different settings, like, depending on the amount of people in.
[0:31:44 – 0:31:46] Adam: Like, today we have five people playing together.
[0:31:46 – 0:31:47] Adam: It is a game of sorts.
[0:31:47 – 0:31:52] Adam: And so, yeah, that’s a pretty medium-sized spread, I would say.
[0:31:52 – 0:31:52] Adam: Right.
[0:31:52 – 0:31:55] Adam: And so we’re kind of giving some leeway here.
[0:31:56 – 0:31:58] Adam: We’ve had pretty good success, though, so far today.
[0:31:58 – 0:31:58] Adam: Yeah.
[0:32:00 – 0:32:07] Ike Walter: I would like to talk about another neat feature of the Pine Highway, the shotgun start Pine Highway.
[0:32:07 – 0:32:09] Adam: Yeah, I think we should start at the beginning now.
[0:32:10 – 0:32:12] Adam: How does Pine Highway establish itself?
[0:32:13 – 0:32:14] Adam: How do you get the order?
[0:32:14 – 0:32:19] Ike Walter: Yeah, so it’s a very flexible thing in the beginning as you’re setting your tip-ups up.
[0:32:19 – 0:32:26] Ike Walter: It could develop many ways, and it might kind of just be a maelstrom of madness if there’s a bunch of flags during setup.
[0:32:26 – 0:32:27] Adam: And there often is.
[0:32:27 – 0:32:30] Adam: I mean, we had like four flags while we were setting up today.
[0:32:30 – 0:32:34] Adam: And so even at the end of it all, we’re like, wait, so which one, who had which one and which order was it?
[0:32:34 – 0:32:40] Adam: Cause we, so then we ended up like three people on, two people had gotten flags that didn’t amount to anything.
[0:32:40 – 0:32:41] Adam: So they were still up.
[0:32:42 – 0:32:42] Adam: Right.
[0:32:42 – 0:32:43] Adam: But then it was like, well, who’s up?
[0:32:44 – 0:33:00] Ike Walter: So if there was a textbook way to do this, if other people wanted to follow in this system, the ideal way would be a shotgun start Pine Highway system, which would be, that means you get your own tip-ups until setup is complete.
[0:33:00 – 0:33:06] Ike Walter: Whoever catches a fish on their own tip-up first, then you start a rotation after that.
[0:33:08 – 0:33:16] Ike Walter: And that kind of accounts for a figure, let’s say, Chinwhisker has three tip-ups in before I have two in.
[0:33:17 – 0:33:19] Ike Walter: If he gets one up, that’s a lot.
[0:33:20 – 0:33:23] Adam: It may or may not have happened recently.
[0:33:23 – 0:33:30] Ike Walter: He has proportionally more tip-ups in than me, so if one of his goes up, he is rewarded by being able to take that.
[0:33:30 – 0:33:33] Ike Walter: And then a rotation starts after that.
[0:33:33 – 0:33:33] Adam: Absolutely.
[0:33:33 – 0:33:37] Adam: And that said, though, people should help other people set up their tip-ups, too.
[0:33:37 – 0:33:38] Ike Walter: Absolutely.
[0:33:38 – 0:33:38] Ike Walter: Right.
[0:33:39 – 0:33:40] Adam: And it often is.
[0:33:40 – 0:33:47] Adam: Like, somebody will take the drill or whatever, and somebody’s doing scoops and minnows, and the other person’s laying traps.
[0:33:47 – 0:33:48] Adam: Yep, exactly.
[0:33:48 – 0:33:57] Adam: So it is very communal in ways, and there’s a lot of nonverbal communication during the setup process of nods and whistles and pointing.
[0:33:57 – 0:33:57] Adam: Correct.
[0:33:58 – 0:34:27] Ike Walter: yep exactly and um i think it’s also important to note every now and then i would say maybe 10 of the time we do very rarely amongst this group and rarely at the tnr but at other ice fishing trips sometimes it is each man or woman for his own or herself and that and a pine highway system is not used but that has to you know be established uh it’s becoming more and more rare um but i’d also like to say just
[0:34:28 – 0:34:51] Ike Walter: you know the pine highway system like uh high action lakes are preferable like uh if you’re at a lake where there’s trophy potential like lake puckaway for example yeah you know like sometimes we do run just those on our own because you’re not going to get a ton of flags there anyway right well you could catch a really big fish correct so each fisherman can be made as the group you know i mean you can always opt out of any highway
[0:34:52 – 0:34:52] Ike Walter: Right, right.
[0:34:53 – 0:34:55] Ike Walter: But you’ll be judged by your peers if you opt out of a highway.
[0:34:55 – 0:34:56] Ike Walter: That’s right.
[0:34:57 – 0:35:00] Ike Walter: Oh, you’re still getting judged by your peers.
[0:35:00 – 0:35:01] Adam: You’re always in.
[0:35:01 – 0:35:03] Adam: You can never leave the Pine Highway.
[0:35:05 – 0:35:07] Adam: We’re all driving the Pine Highway.
[0:35:08 – 0:35:11] Adam: Yeah, if you’re still on the ice.
[0:35:11 – 0:35:19] Ike Walter: And one other important part is the establishment of order, whether it’s a shotgun start or not, it’s just a highly negotiated process.
[0:35:19 – 0:35:22] Ike Walter: There’s no set and true way to who’s next.
[0:35:22 – 0:35:23] Ike Walter: You just figure that out.
[0:35:23 – 0:35:29] Adam: Well, here we go, because then we finally had it all set, and now we’re in here in the shanty, and somebody goes, well, there’s one up.
[0:35:30 – 0:35:31] Adam: And so it’s like, well, you’re out there.
[0:35:32 – 0:35:33] Adam: And I was out there, too.
[0:35:33 – 0:35:36] Adam: And it was like, well, I think Mitch is up, though, maybe.
[0:35:36 – 0:35:37] Adam: But it was spinning.
[0:35:38 – 0:35:42] Adam: So then you correctly, as judged by me, took that flag.
[0:35:42 – 0:35:43] Adam: I would have done the same.
[0:35:43 – 0:35:44] Ike Walter: Correct.
[0:35:44 – 0:35:44] Ike Walter: Jump in.
[0:35:45 – 0:35:46] Ike Walter: You’ve got to jump in.
[0:35:46 – 0:35:50] Ike Walter: It’s another flexible part of the Pine Highway is what’s most important?
[0:35:50 – 0:35:51] Ike Walter: The fish.
[0:35:51 – 0:35:53] Ike Walter: Always the fish first.
[0:35:53 – 0:35:58] Ike Walter: So even if no one’s coming out there and you happen to be by it and it’s ripping the line, you grab it.
[0:35:59 – 0:35:59] Ike Walter: Absolutely.
[0:35:59 – 0:36:00] Ike Walter: And you’ll be judged by your peers.
[0:36:00 – 0:36:06] Ike Walter: And 99.8% success rate, you’ll be judged as a good person.
[0:36:06 – 0:36:08] Ike Walter: And that 1%, you’ve got to get new friends.
[0:36:08 – 0:36:09] Ike Walter: Yeah, exactly.
[0:36:09 – 0:36:10] Ike Walter: Find new friends.
[0:36:10 – 0:36:11] Ike Walter: Find new friends.
[0:36:11 – 0:36:12] Ike Walter: All right.
[0:36:13 – 0:36:15] Ike Walter: See, that’s the beauty of the system.
[0:36:15 – 0:36:19] Ike Walter: I don’t think I’ve ever had a critical disagreement with someone on this.
[0:36:19 – 0:36:20] Ike Walter: Right, right.
[0:36:20 – 0:36:24] Adam: It’s usually pretty cordial.
[0:36:24 – 0:36:30] Adam: And then I think we need to talk about moratoriums, which are another way to deal with it.
[0:36:30 – 0:36:36] Adam: Say Mitch had one, and it was a very big minnow, but it did have quite a bit of line out.
[0:36:38 – 0:36:41] Adam: So it was like it probably was the minnow, but maybe not.
[0:36:41 – 0:36:43] Adam: So then he did this.
[0:36:43 – 0:36:46] Adam: He called a 10-minute moratorium on that flag.
[0:36:47 – 0:36:50] Adam: The rest of the spread is moved on to the next person in line.
[0:36:50 – 0:36:51] Adam: Correct, yeah.
[0:36:51 – 0:36:54] Adam: And so then we waited out there in the wind, waited 10 minutes.
[0:36:55 – 0:36:58] Adam: It didn’t go up, and then he said, okay, my watch has ended.
[0:36:58 – 0:36:58] Adam: Right, right.
[0:36:58 – 0:37:00] Adam: He passed the baton, have you.
[0:37:01 – 0:37:01] Adam: I love that.
[0:37:02 – 0:37:04] Ike Walter: Yeah, I love the moratorium rule as well.
[0:37:05 – 0:37:07] Ike Walter: How did you judge him on that, being out there next to him?
[0:37:07 – 0:37:10] Adam: It was absolutely the correct call, and I loved it, yeah.
[0:37:10 – 0:37:11] Adam: I agree with it.
[0:37:11 – 0:37:21] Adam: I’m all about creative influence, and just in the way you call the Pine Highway, it’s, you know, you just have to take every moment in its own time.
[0:37:21 – 0:37:24] Ike Walter: This is a great, I was about to say something to the same effect.
[0:37:24 – 0:37:27] Ike Walter: Yeah, it’s like every individual thing.
[0:37:29 – 0:37:32] Ike Walter: It could be done either which way.
[0:37:33 – 0:37:36] Adam: It’s a beautiful game, and you never know how it’s going to unfold.
[0:37:36 – 0:37:43] Adam: The setup, the Pine Highway, everything about it is fun, and we highly recommend it.
[0:37:43 – 0:37:49] Adam: Are there any other subtleties to the game of the Pine Highway?
[0:37:49 – 0:37:50] Adam: We could talk about this for hours, I would think.
[0:37:50 – 0:37:51] Adam: Yeah, we could go on.
[0:37:51 – 0:37:54] Adam: But I want to make sure we hit all the main points here.
[0:37:54 – 0:37:59] Ike Walter: I think it’s a good way to, like, ice fishing is a very fun communal sport.
[0:37:59 – 0:38:01] Ike Walter: It’s also a good way to get other people into it.
[0:38:01 – 0:38:05] Ike Walter: You set up tip-ups for them, and it allows them to, hey, okay, go try.
[0:38:05 – 0:38:06] Ike Walter: You’re up.
[0:38:06 – 0:38:07] Ike Walter: Go get it.
[0:38:07 – 0:38:13] Ike Walter: And sometimes, even if you have 15 tip-ups up, you’ve got the green machine out here that’s gone up, like, six times today already.
[0:38:13 – 0:38:14] Adam: Every 24 hours.
[0:38:14 – 0:38:32] Adam: and so and instead of trevor getting uh seven chances at one fish everybody gets to try one at the green machine plus it’s always fun to handle the green machine so it just spreads it around a little bit more yeah it’s maybe a little bit commie but it’s cool but again it’s a
[0:38:33 – 0:39:00] Ike Walter: yeah it is voluntary it’s voluntary communism yeah on the ice and yeah and it’s a lot of fun and the peer the peer judgment factor ensures all things work is that the judicial branch like if i would say i’m opting out i want only mine yeah you could do it but i think the the judgment of the peers would keep you from doing that it’s more it’s a pact we can fit a man’s head down those 10 inch holes we might grab you by your feet you know it’s uh
[0:39:01 – 0:39:15] Ike Walter: Basically, ice fishing is, like, when psychiatrists and psychologists and any kind of scientific-type person would study this type of thing, this is, like, the highest level of society is ice fishing.
[0:39:15 – 0:39:16] Ike Walter: Yeah.
[0:39:16 – 0:39:20] Ike Walter: That’s where, you know, like, it doesn’t get any better than this, basically.
[0:39:20 – 0:39:20] Ike Walter: Correct.
[0:39:20 – 0:39:22] Ike Walter: And I will say one final thing.
[0:39:23 – 0:39:25] Ike Walter: Maybe a pine highway is best in, like, a…
[0:39:26 – 0:39:53] Ike Walter: four to eight person situation you get up to like if you had like 10 or 12 people out it’s kind of madness you may not want to do that yeah it would be chaos you have to it’s that like yeah four three that was really fun yeah yeah team highways you have one highway against another highway sure yeah oh and a final uh if you’re on deck you’re riding the pine highway i don’t not sure if we’re right right and then what’s it called if you’re the next person up oh
[0:39:55 – 0:39:56] Adam: You’re in the hole.
[0:39:56 – 0:39:56] Adam: In the hole, yeah.
[0:39:56 – 0:39:57] Adam: Yeah, you’re in the hole.
[0:39:57 – 0:39:58] Ike Walter: Yeah, you’re in the hole.
[0:39:58 – 0:40:00] Adam: No, no, on deck.
[0:40:00 – 0:40:01] Adam: His hole is 30.
[0:40:02 – 0:40:02] Adam: Yeah, you’re correct.
[0:40:03 – 0:40:04] Adam: Fact check on the fly.
[0:40:04 – 0:40:06] Ike Walter: So actually, who’s riding the pine right now?
[0:40:07 – 0:40:07] Adam: I am.
[0:40:07 – 0:40:08] Adam: Okay.
[0:40:10 – 0:40:10] Adam: I am definitely up.
[0:40:10 – 0:40:11] Adam: That’s the other thing.
[0:40:11 – 0:40:15] Adam: You always got to be keeping track of who’s up and where you are on the pine highway.
[0:40:15 – 0:40:16] Adam: Make sure you’re ready.
[0:40:16 – 0:40:20] Adam: And then once you’re like, okay, I got a fish, then you go to the bottom of the lineup.
[0:40:20 – 0:40:23] Adam: So that’s when you can go take care of your business or whatever.
[0:40:23 – 0:40:23] Adam: Right.
[0:40:24 – 0:40:24] Adam: Take a break.
[0:40:25 – 0:40:26] Adam: what have you.
[0:40:26 – 0:40:30] Adam: So anyways, that’s a basic outline of pine highway fishing.
[0:40:30 – 0:40:31] Adam: We highly recommend it.
[0:40:32 – 0:40:38] Adam: It’s definitely the way to go when you get together with your buddies and give it a try next time you’re on the lake.
[0:40:39 – 0:40:43] Adam: We’ll check back with you once we catch the next fish.
[0:40:56 – 0:41:17] Adam: tumble home live report from the tiberius and raul classic is coming to you from studio shanty on bcl and as always we are sponsored by lining kugel’s original that’s a tasty lager check them out next time you’re ice fishing and having a good time
[0:41:33 – 0:41:38] Ike Walter: Oh boy, we got a big old bass.
[0:41:39 – 0:41:40] Ike Walter: Yeah, look at this.
[0:41:40 – 0:41:41] Ike Walter: We need good pliers though.
[0:41:42 – 0:41:43] Ike Walter: I got my big pliers.
[0:41:44 – 0:41:45] Ike Walter: We might be adding to our meal.
[0:41:45 – 0:41:46] Ike Walter: Yeah, try it.
[0:41:46 – 0:41:48] Ike Walter: You’re better at those kind than mine.
[0:41:48 – 0:41:49] Ike Walter: Let me get the right hand grip.
[0:41:49 – 0:41:53] Adam: So Warren has got like a 16-inch largemouth bass here.
[0:41:53 – 0:41:54] Adam: Hold on, sorry.
[0:41:54 – 0:41:55] Adam: Oh, that might be, I don’t know.
[0:41:55 – 0:41:56] Adam: We either got to cut it or keep them.
[0:41:57 – 0:41:59] Ike Walter: Well, I think I’m going to yank that tip up anyway.
[0:42:02 – 0:42:03] Ike Walter: That’s over 16.
[0:42:03 – 0:42:05] Ike Walter: Oh, I think you got your tape.
[0:42:05 – 0:42:09] Ike Walter: Hey, I don’t know.
[0:42:10 – 0:42:13] Adam: That’s hooked pretty good, but that’s a really big bass.
[0:42:13 – 0:42:13] Ike Walter: Why don’t we eat him?
[0:42:13 – 0:42:15] Ike Walter: Cold, fresh water.
[0:42:15 – 0:42:16] Adam: Nothing wrong with that.
[0:42:17 – 0:42:18] Ike Walter: Yeah, let’s keep him.
[0:42:19 – 0:42:20] Ike Walter: What are we at here, Trevor?
[0:42:22 – 0:42:22] Ike Walter: It’s a beauty.
[0:42:23 – 0:42:23] Ike Walter: Let’s see.
[0:42:26 – 0:42:28] Ike Walter: Almost 18.
[0:42:28 – 0:42:31] Ike Walter: How about bottom of the… Can we give him 18 from the bottom of the mouth?
[0:42:31 – 0:42:32] Ike Walter: Yeah, we’ll give him.
[0:42:32 – 0:42:34] Adam: It’s an 18-inch largemouth bass.
[0:42:34 – 0:42:37] Ike Walter: It’s a nice one, and we’re going to eat him because I don’t think he…
[0:42:37 – 0:42:39] Ike Walter: This flag’s probably been up for 20 minutes.
[0:42:39 – 0:42:41] Adam: They were both up.
[0:42:41 – 0:42:42] Adam: I got one back up over here.
[0:42:42 – 0:42:43] Ike Walter: There may be another bass in there.
[0:42:43 – 0:42:44] Ike Walter: Pew, pew, pew.
[0:42:44 – 0:42:45] Ike Walter: Pew, pew, pew.
[0:42:46 – 0:42:46] Ike Walter: Pew, pew, pew.
[0:42:50 – 0:42:56] Adam: We are here in the historical halls of the Pipsawa II.
[0:42:56 – 0:43:11] Adam: We’re in the library of the Pipsawa, and we’re going to go over 14 years of Tiberius and Raul classic history, starting, of course, where it all began in 2006, January 7th.
[0:43:11 – 0:43:12] Adam: The fishing…
[0:43:17 – 0:43:21] Adam: It was below a threshold, and the occurrence was we forgot the food.
[0:43:21 – 0:43:27] Adam: We, of course, have our T-shirt here from the TNR 10.
[0:43:27 – 0:43:36] Adam: Warden, you designed, printed, and organized the entire event on which this T-shirt is organized and built.
[0:43:38 – 0:43:44] Adam: What can you tell me about the Tiberius and Raul and the way that the occurrences have been recorded?
[0:43:45 – 0:43:46] Ike Walter: Sure, Ike.
[0:43:47 – 0:43:52] Ike Walter: So basically over the years, we’ve just looked back and what was the main thing that happened each year?
[0:43:52 – 0:43:57] Ike Walter: Was there a great fish caught or some madness or something?
[0:43:57 – 0:44:05] Ike Walter: And so when the TNR 10 came along, I said, well, why don’t we, I don’t know, let’s at least, if we can get three things together, the date,
[0:44:06 – 0:44:12] Ike Walter: The best fish caught and any kind of great thing of remembrance, let’s record all those.
[0:44:12 – 0:44:14] Ike Walter: And that’s what we’ve done on the t-shirt.
[0:44:14 – 0:44:18] Adam: It’s a great commemoration of the event so far.
[0:44:18 – 0:44:24] Adam: And I think next year we do have to have an updated shirt now with 15 years coming back.
[0:44:25 – 0:44:26] Adam: So this was issued in 2015.
[0:44:29 – 0:44:29] Adam: 10 years in.
[0:44:30 – 0:44:31] Ike Walter: Or after 10 years?
[0:44:32 – 0:44:34] Ike Walter: It was more 10th occurrence.
[0:44:35 – 0:44:36] Ike Walter: This was a TNR 10.
[0:44:36 – 0:44:38] Ike Walter: And actually, a quick fact check.
[0:44:38 – 0:44:44] Ike Walter: I think on the earlier interview, we said first one was 2007.
[0:44:44 – 0:44:47] Ike Walter: But clearly, we see right here, Ike, first one was 2006.
[0:44:47 – 0:44:49] Ike Walter: It’s a good thing you made this t-shirt.
[0:44:49 – 0:44:50] Ike Walter: Yeah, for a good fact check.
[0:44:50 – 0:44:51] Ike Walter: Yeah.
[0:44:52 – 0:45:11] Adam: a wearable wikipedia here yeah all right so nothing much happened 2006 but it sounds like you didn’t even really try to fish and you didn’t have any food the real tnr begins in year two i think 2007 and uh we have a tile we have a tyler raider 31 inch fat pike
[0:45:13 – 0:45:20] Adam: And that was the year of the Yukon Jack grenade, in which Yukon Jack wreaked havoc.
[0:45:21 – 0:45:23] Adam: And the wind also, the wind that year.
[0:45:23 – 0:45:30] Ike Walter: The wind river, and if you look on the occurrence here, it says he’s a… Can I swear on this podcast?
[0:45:30 – 0:45:30] Ike Walter: You can swear.
[0:45:31 – 0:45:32] Ike Walter: Okay, he’s a fucking witch.
[0:45:32 – 0:45:38] Ike Walter: Okay, now there’s a significance behind that, because it’s probably the best video ever recorded of a TNR.
[0:45:39 – 0:45:39] Ike Walter: Tyler Rader said…
[0:45:40 – 0:45:49] Ike Walter: sat, or you and Tyler Rader sat, I think a snap, or the snap trap with treble hooks up on itself.
[0:45:50 – 0:45:51] Ike Walter: Rattle trap.
[0:45:51 – 0:45:52] Ike Walter: Super trap.
[0:45:52 – 0:45:58] Ike Walter: And Ty Rader says, now lay him to bed, puts his fist down, and it falls over.
[0:45:58 – 0:45:59] Ike Walter: It’s one of the greatest videos ever.
[0:45:59 – 0:46:01] Ike Walter: Maybe put that on the Instagram.
[0:46:01 – 0:46:06] Adam: We’re going to have to link to that beautiful rattle trap video.
[0:46:06 – 0:46:07] Adam: Yeah.
[0:46:07 – 0:46:08] Adam: The dancing rattle trap.
[0:46:09 – 0:46:10] Adam: Year three, 2008.
[0:46:10 – 0:46:11] Adam: Andrew Bender.
[0:46:11 – 0:46:14] Adam: Famous today for the new record.
[0:46:14 – 0:46:20] Adam: But back in 2008, set the first record with a 32-inch record.
[0:46:26 – 0:46:42] Ike Walter: fat pike yeah bender’s been catching these 32s uh he basically gets at least a 32 every year well not every year but so he’s probably the most consistent fisherman i’ve ever met yep he catches the big ones and uh obviously broke that record today
[0:46:42 – 0:46:50] Adam: We also had a 19-inch largemouth bass, crappie, bullhead, and pike, multi-species assault.
[0:46:50 – 0:46:56] Adam: That may have been the first year we actually caught bullhead on the overnight tip-ups.
[0:46:56 – 0:47:03] Adam: That one year, a couple years there, we were setting tip-ups out in front of the cabin here with blinkers, catching nothing but bullheads after dark.
[0:47:04 – 0:47:05] Adam: Good times.
[0:47:05 – 0:47:07] Ike Walter: Yep, exactly.
[0:47:07 – 0:47:17] Adam: Year four, we’re really starting to hit our groove here, and this is the year of the Thursday, the big fish on Thursday on January 22nd, probably.
[0:47:17 – 0:47:19] Ike Walter: Oh, yeah, probably, given the date there.
[0:47:19 – 0:47:22] Ike Walter: And there’s another critical thing about this.
[0:47:22 – 0:47:26] Ike Walter: So it was me, Trevor Chinwhisker, and Brendan Silly Dean.
[0:47:27 – 0:47:32] Ike Walter: We came up on a Thursday in Brendan’s old F-150, and Trevor will recall this.
[0:47:32 – 0:47:38] Ike Walter: The fog was so thick that when we were driving out on Thursday, we couldn’t even tell we were moving.
[0:47:39 – 0:47:40] Ike Walter: Can you corroborate this?
[0:47:40 – 0:47:41] Ike Walter: I can corroborate this.
[0:47:42 – 0:47:42] Ike Walter: It was…
[0:47:43 – 0:47:48] Ike Walter: Like, we had the windows rolled down, and, like, we could hear the engine and, like, the tires moving.
[0:47:49 – 0:47:49] Ike Walter: And you’d look outside.
[0:47:50 – 0:47:55] Ike Walter: Not only could you not tell if you were moving, you couldn’t tell, like, the ground from, like, the sky.
[0:47:55 – 0:47:59] Ike Walter: Like, it was, the fog was so thick, it was just, like, looking out into soup.
[0:47:59 – 0:48:00] Ike Walter: And, like, that was it.
[0:48:01 – 0:48:02] Ike Walter: That’s terrifying.
[0:48:02 – 0:48:03] Ike Walter: It was crazy, yeah.
[0:48:03 – 0:48:19] Ike Walter: But at the same point, around 11 a.m. on a classic presentation for this lake, we had some tip-ups in, and Chinwhisker nailed the pike long-held record.
[0:48:19 – 0:48:20] Ike Walter: The bruiser.
[0:48:20 – 0:48:24] Adam: On the shirt, it’s the only fish described as a bruiser.
[0:48:25 – 0:48:31] Adam: There’s several fat ones and a few tanks, but only one bruiser until today.
[0:48:31 – 0:48:32] Adam: That was 2009, right?
[0:48:33 – 0:48:34] Adam: It’s now 2019.
[0:48:35 – 0:48:37] Ike Walter: The record held for 10 years, a decade.
[0:48:38 – 0:48:39] Adam: That is quite the fish.
[0:48:39 – 0:48:41] UNKNOWN: Congratulations.
[0:48:42 – 0:48:42] Ike Walter: Thank you.
[0:48:42 – 0:48:49] Ike Walter: And I’m glad that such a fine champion such as Andrew Bender would be the one to take me out on this one here.
[0:48:50 – 0:48:56] Ike Walter: Given his pedigree of 31 to 32 inches over the years, it was good that Bender caught that.
[0:48:57 – 0:48:59] Ike Walter: He takes it with a calm attitude.
[0:49:00 – 0:49:26] Ike Walter: demeanor and uh yep and and lands them firm so also in 2009 it was uh described as a brutally cold saturday right so again like we were saying in the initial uh recordings uh it’s usually a decrease from thursday to saturday and it gets brutally cold kind of as it is this time too but we got lucky yeah minus five right now bender okay but we got lucky we were off the ice before it got super brutal
[0:49:26 – 0:49:28] Adam: We were smart this year.
[0:49:28 – 0:49:29] Adam: We pulled it early.
[0:49:29 – 0:49:35] Adam: And then also in 2010, moving along, also was ranked as a brutally cold Saturday.
[0:49:36 – 0:49:36] Adam: Yep.
[0:49:36 – 0:49:37] UNKNOWN: Yep.
[0:49:37 – 0:49:40] Adam: So, yeah, so Saturdays are always bad.
[0:49:40 – 0:49:45] Adam: And some guy named Chris Cass had a 35-inch tank pike.
[0:49:46 – 0:49:49] Ike Walter: I think that was a hot Quick Trip hole, Bender.
[0:49:49 – 0:49:50] Ike Walter: Quick Trip Exchange Corner.
[0:49:51 – 0:49:51] Ike Walter: Yeah.
[0:49:52 – 0:49:54] Ike Walter: And that one froze my hands off, but it was a beautiful fish.
[0:49:56 – 0:49:56] Adam: Right on.
[0:49:56 – 0:49:59] Adam: 2011, below threshold.
[0:50:00 – 0:50:02] Ike Walter: But one of the greatest occurrences ever.
[0:50:02 – 0:50:09] Ike Walter: So in 2011, we’re considering this maybe one in, I don’t know, 20 to 25-year occurrence.
[0:50:09 – 0:50:09] Ike Walter: We’ll see.
[0:50:10 – 0:50:15] Ike Walter: There was sheer ice of drivable thickness, so 14 to 18 inches.
[0:50:18 – 0:50:26] Ike Walter: Clear on the top, but we had puffy snowfall of, I don’t know, three to five powder inches of snow.
[0:50:26 – 0:50:26] Ike Walter: Yeah, it was pow-pow.
[0:50:27 – 0:50:38] Ike Walter: And we drove the trucks around, and I think we have a video of Bender’s truck with about a 10 to 15-foot rooster tail of snow behind it.
[0:50:39 – 0:50:46] Ike Walter: And I think one of a kind occurrence, we got videos of these amazing snow tails of…
[0:50:48 – 0:51:11] Adam: behind the trucks and we’ve never seen it since 2012 coming up and this is the latest one a january 28th tnr the latest tnr in the in the calendar we have a disputed 30 inch pikes by chin whisker charles and the warden here oh yep yep disbooted
[0:51:15 – 0:51:17] Adam: And we also have shanty fire.
[0:51:17 – 0:51:21] Adam: Also, shanty is spelled wrong, although how do you really spell shanty?
[0:51:21 – 0:51:22] Adam: That’s in the eye of the beholder.
[0:51:22 – 0:51:23] Adam: That is, yeah.
[0:51:24 – 0:51:31] Adam: Yeah, stweens started a shanty on fire and then also saved it from burning to the ground at the same time.
[0:51:31 – 0:51:39] Adam: And that was also the year we had the keg of the hop slam, so that you can understand why there was a shanty fire.
[0:51:39 – 0:51:40] Adam: Yeah.
[0:51:41 – 0:51:47] Adam: 2013 was the year we finally got into crappies, and we also had a lot of wind and dogs around that year.
[0:51:47 – 0:51:56] Adam: But it seems that was the year we finally unlocked the mystery of the crappie, which we actually didn’t stay out and really wait for the crappie tonight.
[0:51:56 – 0:52:01] Adam: We ended up having to pull it and get our asses inside due to the brutal cold, but…
[0:52:02 – 0:52:21] Ike Walter: right as we’ve talked about a little bit before the crappies was a kind of a late revelation didn’t come in to like six years in to the tnr that we could figure that one out yep absolutely and that’s become a nice like uh fun extra thing stay out into darkness uh and clearly we perfected it this year uh but this 2013 one uh
[0:52:24 – 0:52:25] Ike Walter: That was no bullshit.
[0:52:25 – 0:52:31] Ike Walter: The wind that moved in around 3 to 4 p.m., it was 30 to 40 miles an hour ahead of a storm or something.
[0:52:31 – 0:52:39] Ike Walter: And I think we all started quickly breaking things down and running to get off the ice.
[0:52:39 – 0:52:43] Adam: Yeah, that was sort of a get the heck out now.
[0:52:44 – 0:52:44] Ike Walter: Yeah.
[0:52:45 – 0:52:49] Adam: And what’s the master’s class in fine ice fishing gatherings?
[0:52:50 – 0:52:58] Ike Walter: Well, because, okay, so in 2014, there was no other brutality or anything bad that happened.
[0:52:58 – 0:53:01] Ike Walter: It was just like, yeah, it’s just a master’s class in ice fishing.
[0:53:01 – 0:53:03] Ike Walter: Everything coming together, including you catching a 35-inch fish.
[0:53:06 – 0:53:07] Ike Walter: Tank pike.
[0:53:07 – 0:53:09] Ike Walter: Right, so see, I have two of these.
[0:53:10 – 0:53:12] Ike Walter: Two 35s over the years.
[0:53:12 – 0:53:16] Ike Walter: That’s over 70 inches of pike just in those two fish.
[0:53:16 – 0:53:20] Ike Walter: Actually, and okay, I think beyond this, I think Bender had like…
[0:53:21 – 0:53:22] Ike Walter: Was it last year or two years ago, Ben?
[0:53:22 – 0:53:26] Ike Walter: Or you had like 59 inches of pike before we could even… Yeah.
[0:53:26 – 0:53:29] Ike Walter: Yeah, so see, this guy’s always catching the big pike.
[0:53:31 – 0:53:31] Adam: Oh, yeah.
[0:53:31 – 0:53:32] Adam: He’s a professional.
[0:53:33 – 0:53:37] Adam: So, yeah, the shirt only takes us through to 2014.
[0:53:37 – 0:53:39] Adam: I believe the shirt was issued in 2015.
[0:53:41 – 0:53:44] Adam: Which was, I caught myself a really nice pike.
[0:53:44 – 0:53:45] Adam: Oh, you had a banner year.
[0:53:45 – 0:53:50] Adam: The walk-off pike, or was it the walk-off bowfin?
[0:53:50 – 0:53:54] Ike Walter: Yeah, you had a bowfin, then a walk-off 36-inch pike.
[0:53:54 – 0:53:56] Adam: It was a pretty good year.
[0:53:56 – 0:53:57] Adam: I’ll never top that.
[0:53:57 – 0:53:59] Adam: Well, I mean, maybe you will.
[0:53:59 – 0:54:03] Adam: Unless I get Tiberius, which we’ll get to that.
[0:54:03 – 0:54:05] Adam: That’s got to be… We will explain…
[0:54:07 – 0:54:08] Ike Walter: Yeah, the characters.
[0:54:08 – 0:54:11] Ike Walter: Maybe after a little break, though, another drink refill.
[0:54:11 – 0:54:12] Ike Walter: Oh, yeah.
[0:54:12 – 0:54:13] Ike Walter: I’m muy sad.
[0:54:13 – 0:54:14] Adam: Very thirst.
[0:54:15 – 0:54:17] Adam: But, yeah, I don’t know.
[0:54:17 – 0:54:20] Adam: We had three or four more years here that are unaccounted for.
[0:54:20 – 0:54:20] Adam: Right.
[0:54:20 – 0:54:27] Ike Walter: Well, they’re not on a T-shirt yet, so maybe if we – I mean, do we want to try and recount them or – Yeah, let’s give it a quick once-over.
[0:54:27 – 0:54:30] Adam: I have nothing, like, written out, though, so.
[0:54:30 – 0:54:32] Ike Walter: So I could go – okay, let’s just go to last year.
[0:54:33 – 0:54:37] Ike Walter: Last year there was – Bender caught a 32-incher, like usual.
[0:54:37 – 0:54:38] Ike Walter: Yeah.
[0:54:38 – 0:54:39] Ike Walter: We caught some nice crappies.
[0:54:41 – 0:54:43] Ike Walter: If we go the year before – Trevor, what year was captain here?
[0:54:45 – 0:54:46] Ike Walter: I think the year before.
[0:54:46 – 0:54:47] Ike Walter: Yeah, I think the year before, yeah.
[0:54:48 – 0:54:49] Ike Walter: And we struggled.
[0:54:49 – 0:54:53] Ike Walter: It was, oh, one important point about last year, it was balmy.
[0:54:53 – 0:54:56] Ike Walter: It was 25 to 30 every day.
[0:54:56 – 0:54:57] Ike Walter: It was really nice last year.
[0:54:58 – 0:54:58] Ike Walter: Yep.
[0:54:59 – 0:55:01] Ike Walter: Two years before that, the captain came.
[0:55:01 – 0:55:10] Ike Walter: We ended up catching a nice, fat 26-incher, and we had good action all weekend, but no… Yeah, and some crappies.
[0:55:10 – 0:55:12] Ike Walter: Yeah.
[0:55:12 – 0:55:15] Ike Walter: Yeah, now that we know they’re here, we’re on them.
[0:55:20 – 0:55:22] Adam: All right, let me just ask you one final question.
[0:55:22 – 0:55:36] Adam: In all these years of fishing for Tiberius and Raul, how many data points do you feel you’ve collected in your life on Tiberius and Raul-related ice fishing?
[0:55:36 – 0:55:37] Ike Walter: See, that’s a great question.
[0:55:37 – 0:55:39] Ike Walter: I was actually thinking about that earlier today.
[0:55:39 – 0:55:43] Adam: I mean, I know you have multiple layers of GPS data.
[0:55:46 – 0:55:52] Adam: Books, volumes and volumes and books, just things written down, notes.
[0:55:54 – 0:56:03] Adam: Stories, the lore, what do you have as far as total volume of work into the TNR?
[0:56:04 – 0:56:16] Ike Walter: Okay, well, I mean, we obviously have 14 years of collection of data and things, but I guess the closing point I would make on your question is that
[0:56:17 – 0:56:18] Ike Walter: I don’t know.
[0:56:18 – 0:56:32] Ike Walter: Given what we saw on Puckaway with the fish die-off, I think it is so cyclical, and I think what mattered 14 years ago for the TNR has nothing to do with what goes on now, and I don’t think it matters.
[0:56:33 – 0:56:40] Ike Walter: That pike we caught today, I don’t think, I don’t know, was that alive 14 years ago or is that a 25-year-old pike?
[0:56:40 – 0:56:41] Ike Walter: I guess I don’t know.
[0:56:41 – 0:56:43] Adam: I would say it’s one of the original Pindex.
[0:56:44 – 0:56:47] Ike Walter: Yeah, yeah, it could have been one we, yeah, Pindex, yeah.
[0:56:47 – 0:56:52] Ike Walter: Better you just caught one of the original Pindex.
[0:56:52 – 0:56:53] Adam: Yeah, so.
[0:56:53 – 0:56:54] Adam: And we’ll end with that.
[0:56:55 – 0:56:58] Adam: We’ll be back later after a brief break.
[0:57:39 – 0:57:40] Ike Walter: Hey, it’s Warden here.
[0:57:40 – 0:57:45] Ike Walter: I want to talk more about the history of the TNR Classic.
[0:57:46 – 0:57:49] Ike Walter: Ike and I struggled a little bit with it.
[0:57:49 – 0:57:59] Ike Walter: It has been going on for 14 years, and we couldn’t quite remember if we backdated the first one after, you know, because we went fishing for a couple years.
[0:58:00 – 0:58:03] Ike Walter: We then called some random trip the first year of the TNR Classic, but…
[0:58:04 – 0:58:16] Ike Walter: After doing some in-depth research on historical emails, it is 100% confirmed that the TNR Classic has been the TNR Classic from day one.
[0:58:17 – 0:58:26] Ike Walter: How this occurred is in 2006, I was working a job as kind of an internet salesperson at Breger Ford in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
[0:58:27 – 0:58:29] Ike Walter: And we had this trip planned.
[0:58:30 – 0:58:32] Ike Walter: We were going to go to Washburn County.
[0:58:33 – 0:58:43] Ike Walter: to the Pipswood 2, and we were going to try to ice fish on this lake we’d been fishing in the summer for years, but never thought to try over the hard water.
[0:58:43 – 0:59:00] Ike Walter: So I’m sitting at work on what appears to have been a Friday morning, and I was anxious, I wanted to get on the road, and I conjured up an email, and I sent it to Ike Walter,
[0:59:04 – 0:59:06] Ike Walter: Chinwhisker Charlie and Bender.
[0:59:08 – 0:59:10] Ike Walter: And what I’m going to do now is recite the email.
[0:59:10 – 0:59:16] Ike Walter: The fun thing about it is I didn’t realize, I couldn’t remember that the email is actually a conversation that occurs.
[0:59:16 – 0:59:24] Ike Walter: And I was just trying to paint a picture of how us humans were excited to be going up north to fish.
[0:59:25 – 0:59:26] Ike Walter: And I don’t know, I was sitting there bored at work.
[0:59:27 – 0:59:32] Ike Walter: I guess I came up with this idea of what the fish might be thinking.
[0:59:33 – 0:59:34] Ike Walter: And the rest is history.
[0:59:34 – 0:59:44] Ike Walter: So without further ado, here is the reading of the transcript email that started the Tiberius and Raw Classic.
[0:59:49 – 0:59:49] Ike Walter: Tiberius!
[0:59:50 – 0:59:51] Ike Walter: Tiberius, wake!
[0:59:51 – 0:59:52] Ike Walter: I say, wake!
[0:59:53 – 0:59:55] Ike Walter: Raoul, you have woken me at an unfitting hour.
[0:59:56 – 1:00:00] Ike Walter: Take solace that only 50 of your young fry will meet their fate in my gullet.
[1:00:00 – 1:00:02] Ike Walter: Tiberius, enough nonsense.
[1:00:02 – 1:00:03] Ike Walter: There’s grave danger.
[1:00:03 – 1:00:04] Ike Walter: You must come quickly.
[1:00:05 – 1:00:08] Ike Walter: Your fiery spirit will be your demise, Raoul.
[1:00:08 – 1:00:09] Ike Walter: It will be your demise.
[1:00:12 – 1:00:24] Ike Walter: Tiberius and Raul make their way to Washburn County Prime IDH, nestled 27 feet below the surface in Washburn County Lake’s most heavily guarded fortification.
[1:00:24 – 1:00:28] Ike Walter: Raul is a young, fast-growing aggressor in the Pike Order.
[1:00:28 – 1:00:30] Ike Walter: Tiberius is a wise phenom of sorts.
[1:00:31 – 1:00:38] Ike Walter: It is rumored that he single-handedly decimated the Washburn County Lake walleye population years before, leaving only small resistance
[1:00:40 – 1:00:44] Ike Walter: Known as the Black Order, the remaining walleye holdouts are truly a prized race.
[1:00:44 – 1:00:46] Ike Walter: To capture one is a message from the Lord.
[1:00:47 – 1:00:52] Ike Walter: Raul and Tiberius approach the Imperial Defense Headquarters regional defense grid.
[1:00:53 – 1:00:55] Ike Walter: Tiberius, on the map, look here.
[1:00:56 – 1:00:58] Ike Walter: Raoul, you sniveling fool!
[1:00:58 – 1:01:00] Ike Walter: This is no different than any Friday morning.
[1:01:01 – 1:01:05] Ike Walter: Fishermen from across the state are converging on the northwest section of the state the same as any other weekend.
[1:01:06 – 1:01:07] Ike Walter: You have disgraced me, Raoul.
[1:01:07 – 1:01:08] Ike Walter: How dare you wake me at such hour?
[1:01:08 – 1:01:12] Ike Walter: I laugh in the face of these fishermen.
[1:01:12 – 1:01:15] Ike Walter: Tiberius, your success in battle has clouded your vision.
[1:01:16 – 1:01:19] Ike Walter: Look here on the map, here I say, to the Algonquin city of Milwaukee.
[1:01:21 – 1:01:23] Ike Walter: Tiberius was stricken with a frightful cold.
[1:01:24 – 1:01:26] Ike Walter: similar to that of his last encounter with the Black Order.
[1:01:28 – 1:01:31] Ike Walter: The walleye had made a final stand at the Far East Bay years earlier.
[1:01:32 – 1:01:41] Ike Walter: In what was one of the most gruesome encounters, the walleye held out for days, killing many pike, including Tiberius’ brother, Vile, a mystical blue pike.
[1:01:42 – 1:01:50] Ike Walter: Shocked, but now with attention, Tiberius replied, Milwaukee, what is it you see, Raoul?
[1:01:51 – 1:01:54] Ike Walter: With pictorial fin placed firmly on the map, Raul began.
[1:01:55 – 1:01:58] Ike Walter: Tiberius, it is the lying Dorito brothers.
[1:01:59 – 1:02:01] Ike Walter: They depart Milwaukee today at 1 p.m.
[1:02:01 – 1:02:02] Ike Walter: They are heavily armed.
[1:02:03 – 1:02:07] Ike Walter: Initial report suggests as many as 18 tip-ups and a heavy supply of jigging rod.
[1:02:07 – 1:02:10] Ike Walter: Their shiner supply is even more devastating.
[1:02:11 – 1:02:13] Ike Walter: Tiberius’ eyes became cold and dark.
[1:02:14 – 1:02:18] Ike Walter: Even worse, Lord Tiberius, they have a new member who originates from the central part of the state.
[1:02:18 – 1:02:21] Ike Walter: Intelligence believes Madison, but cannot pinpoint a location.
[1:02:22 – 1:02:23] Ike Walter: Who is this new member, Raoul?
[1:02:23 – 1:02:24] Ike Walter: Who is it?
[1:02:26 – 1:02:29] Ike Walter: All we know is he has slayed our Bass brethren by way of bacon.
[1:02:31 – 1:02:34] Ike Walter: Tiberius, shocked with his fear, backed away from the map.
[1:02:35 – 1:02:36] Ike Walter: He knew the losses could be devastating.
[1:02:37 – 1:02:38] Ike Walter: But quickly, Tiberius came to.
[1:02:39 – 1:02:42] Ike Walter: Raoul, quickly, gather your brothers, mobilize the order.
[1:02:43 – 1:02:45] Ike Walter: Tell them to sharpen their teeth and load their gullets.
[1:02:45 – 1:02:50] Ike Walter: There’s little, if anything, we can do to avoid capture by fishermen of this caliber.
[1:02:52 – 1:02:53] Ike Walter: Warden out.
