Episode 288 of the Tom Rowland Podcast is my conversation with Burton Young, the founder of Barracuda Tackle, a company that makes truly excellent cast nets. We recorded this one as an Instagram Live with questions coming in from the audience, so it is a little different and a lot of fun. Burton breaks down how to throw a cast net the easy way, walks through how he built Barracuda Tackle, and explains the work the company did to help fishing guides who could not work during the COVID lockdown.
Watch on YouTube · Listen now · Apple Podcasts · Spotify
Burton Young is the founder of Barracuda Tackle, a company best known for making high-quality cast nets. He is passionate about teaching anglers the right way to throw a net and has built a reputation in the fishing community both for his products and for stepping up to support fishing guides during difficult times.
Barracuda Tackle is the company Burton Young founded that makes amazing cast nets. Beyond selling nets, Burton has put real effort into education, including instructional content like the Bait University videos, and into giving back to the fishing community, especially the guide community, when it needed help.
Burton's key point is that you let the net do the work rather than muscling it. The load is the simple part, what matters is the backswing and the arc of the throw, which is what makes the net open on its own. He teaches a triple load and credits multigenerational mullet fisherman Will Osborne of Cortez, who throws nets back to back all day, with developing a throw that does not exhaust you. Anyone muscling a net, Burton says, will never get it fully open.
Burton credits Will Osborne, a multigenerational mullet fishing man and fishing guide out of Cortez, Florida, with the efficient throw he teaches. Osborne has fished mullet his whole life, loading the boat net after net, and developed a throwing technique that does not wear you out, the same technique featured in Barracuda Tackle's Bait University videos.
During the COVID lockdown, many guides could not work because customers could not reach them or had canceled. Burton explains that Barracuda Tackle took it upon itself to raise money and distribute those funds throughout the guide community, an effort Tom highlights as much appreciated by the people who needed it.
Tom Rowland Podcast Episode 288 with Burton Young is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. The video version, recorded as an Instagram Live, is embedded at the top of this page.
You guys asked for it, so I am trying to deliver, more video content and more audience interaction. We recorded this one as an Instagram Live and took questions from people watching in real time. Burton Young makes amazing cast nets with Barracuda Tackle, and he has a cool story about getting the company started. On top of that, he was doing something genuinely good for the guide community at a time when a lot of people needed it. I wanted to get him on to talk about all of it. Press play in the YouTube player at the top of this page to hear the whole conversation.
Burton is adamant: you let the net do the work. The load is easy. It is all in the backswing and the arc, which is what makes the net open on its own. He teaches a triple load that makes it so much easier, and he points anyone struggling to the Bait University videos. Listen to him break down the throw.
Burton credits Will Osborne, a multigenerational mullet fisherman and guide out of Cortez, with the throw he teaches. Osborne loads boats with mullet net after net, all day, so he had to develop a technique that does not gas you. Hear why that throw is the one Burton teaches everyone.
Burton has a cool origin story for the company, and we get into how Barracuda Tackle became known for its nets. Press play in the YouTube player above to hear how he built it.
During the lockdown, guides were stuck, customers could not reach them or had canceled. Barracuda Tackle took it upon itself to raise money and push those funds out to the guide community. It is the kind of thing worth talking about, and I wanted Burton to walk through it. Listen to that section of the episode.
Listen to the full conversation: Apple Podcasts · Spotify · or watch in the YouTube player at the top of this page.
I love that this episode is both practical and generous. You will come away actually knowing how to throw a cast net better, and you will also hear about a company choosing to take care of the people in its community when times got hard.
Burton built something good and then used it to do something good. That is the kind of guest I want on this show. Listen to the whole conversation.
The Tom Rowland Podcast brings you long-form conversations with the most accomplished anglers, hunters, conservationists, and outdoor professionals in the game. Listen to every full-length Tom Rowland Podcast interview.
Burton Young is the founder of Barracuda Tackle, a company recognized for its high-quality cast nets. A passionate teacher of net-throwing technique, he promotes an efficient triple-load throw learned from multigenerational mullet fisherman Will Osborne and featured in Barracuda Tackle's Bait University videos. Burton is also known for giving back to the fishing community, leading an effort to raise and distribute funds to fishing guides during the COVID lockdown.
Full transcript of the Tom Rowland Podcast, Episode 288 with Burton Young.
Tom Rowland: Hey, and welcome to the podcast today. You guys asked for it, and I'm trying my best to deliver. People wanted video content to go along with the podcast, and I am trying to do that. One of the things that we're doing recently, we've done a few times now. This is probably the second one, but we did an Instagram live. I had the guest come on Instagram live, and we're recording the audio for the audio-only portion. We're recording it with video also for a video portion. It's kind of cool because people can get on there and ask questions. Sometimes we take questions from the audience, and that's exactly what we did on this one.
Tom Rowland: Today's show is with Burton Young from Barracuda Tackle. Barracuda makes amazing cast nets. You probably know him from there. And Burton has a cool story about getting the company started, as well as doing some really cool things for the guide community in this time where a lot of people need it. During the lockdown, many guides are unable to work because their customers can't get to them or they have canceled. So Barracuda has taken it upon themselves to do some things to raise some money and distribute those funds throughout the community, which is much appreciated. So I wanted to get Burton on and find out about that, also about Barracuda Tackle.
Tom Rowland: So this one's a little bit different as far as audio goes because, occasionally, we are taking questions from the audience. If you're interested in seeing the video portion of this, you can do that at tomrowlandpodcast.com. You can also find it on the Saltwater Experience YouTube page, and soon it will be on Waypoint as well. So today, we've got Burton Young, and we've got him on Instagram live, and that's happening right now. There he is. Right on. Now we're cooking.
Burton Young: Hey, Tom. How are you?
Tom Rowland: I'm good, man. How are you?
Burton Young: Good, good.
Tom Rowland: Good deal. Well, thanks for doing this. We've already got a number of people on here.
Burton Young: I see that.
Tom Rowland: Everybody wants to know the Barracuda story. I want to know the Barracuda story. How long have you had Barracuda?
Burton Young: Barracuda, we've been back around for about three and a half years now. It started off back in 1923. Jack Reynolds started the company, and the Reynolds family and my family are close together. So when I started having the idea to build a cast net company, I called some of the Reynolds and asked them if I could use the name, and they gave me rights to everything. And now Barracuda is back in business again.
Tom Rowland: Right. Out of business in '74?
Burton Young: In '74. I think '23 to '74 they were the largest tackle manufacturer in the Southeast US. So they have a history.
Tom Rowland: Yeah. And what all did they manufacture? Was it all types of tackle, or lures?
Burton Young: If you ever look at their catalog, you'll find rods and reels and a number of different things. But mainly they're kind of known for their lures. The Dalton Special, I don't know if you've ever heard of it. It was a top water plug that would be used for bass back in the day. They're mainly known for lures. That was kind of their big thing.
Tom Rowland: And so what did you do before Barracuda?
Burton Young: I actually owned an IT company. I'm actually a Microsoft engineer and a Cisco networking professional, and I was in medical IT services for a long time. I used to do medical software, electronic medical records, and practice management, boring stuff that most people in fishing don't really care about, right?
Tom Rowland: Well, it's kind of boring, but with where we are today, it's becoming more and more popular. It's really weird with the coronavirus and what's happening with the lockdown and everything, that some of the things that seem so boring are now so important to our lives. Tech is one of them. I'd like to know what your forecast is with things like this: Zoom calls, live Instagram, all of this. I seem to think that it's going to explode, and there's going to be a lot of technology, a lot of innovation, going into these types of things where you can communicate with somebody at a distance.
Burton Young: Yeah, I believe it's going to be the way the world moves in the future. I think this brought it to light that a little bit of distance would be good in everybody's lives. Everybody having to go this route, having to work from home and go through all these steps of initiating it, it's just going to start the ball rolling, and I think we're going to see a lot more of it where people are going to be working from home. There's going to be the distance. There's going to be the meetings. Outdoor sports are definitely taking off in a way right now that is unprecedented. You can't buy a bicycle. Fishing tackle is a booming business right now. We had an amazing April as a fishing tackle manufacturer. We didn't expect it, but it just shows that everybody's social distancing. They're getting on the water, they're going on bikes, they're going out to parks, they're spending more time as a family. Honestly, there's a lot of negatives that come out of it, don't get me wrong, but I think there's some positives that will probably spin out of this as well.
Tom Rowland: Well, of course, I always try to look at the silver lining of anything, but there have been some very obvious positives. And it's interesting how some companies will really benefit from this, and usually in a way that they were not expecting. Somebody that makes face masks, like Buff, all of a sudden they just start selling everything they've got.
Burton Young: They have no stock.
Tom Rowland: Nothing. It's all gone. Or Hook is selling all that kind of stuff. And that was completely unexpected, and they're having the best month they've ever had. But then others are really, really suffering.
Burton Young: I mean, the restaurants, all the hospitality workers, and all the fishing guides. Tackle is selling better right now. The tackle sales are up, but the fishing guides, especially where you are in The Keys, where you're part time in The Keys, I was down there last week. There's no work for the guys. There's no anything.
Tom Rowland: Well, there could be work if it was open. I think people would be going. It's a really weird time. We see it in The Keys on a regular basis, where they will close the Keys down because of a hurricane. It's like, okay, residents only. We need to fix the problem that we're having. No one else is allowed. But that's a very temporary thing. It usually lasts for a week, maybe.
Burton Young: Yeah. This is going on two months. They just announced last week their closure for another month. And it's unbelievable because the guides are out of work. I don't think what a lot of people understand is that at this time of year, the guides go into February spending all their money on their boats and their equipment and everything else to make it through March, April, May, when you guys have the busiest time of year. So they spend a lot during that time, and then automatically they were shut down.
Tom Rowland: So you were saying that you were having some friends that were really hurting in The Keys?
Burton Young: In The Keys, and really all over the state altogether. The travel slowdown has hurt guys all over the state. That's why we started that Captain's Relief Fund. I started that off expecting it to be something small, and now we're generating almost $30,000 a week to give the guides.
Tom Rowland: Why don't you tell me about that? How did you think about starting that? Obviously, the guides drive your business, right? Without the guides, you're going to sell a lot of cast nets to individuals, but you're going to sell most of your cast nets to guides or someone that is super avid. So the guides drive your business. So you have an eye on the guides, and then you start thinking, what can I do to help this situation?
Burton Young: Yeah. The guides definitely have made Barracuda Tackle where we are. We got to a big place in the cast net world very quickly, and the guides have kind of brought us there. Guides use our nets. Guides talk about our nets. The fishing guides are some of the biggest influences in the fishing community. And because the fishing community is somewhat spread out geographically, we're out on the water, we're not next to each other, that social media aspect is what drives a lot of people to understand what's up and coming in fishing products, what's better and what's not. So the guys have really gotten behind us since the beginning. And when I was talking to a couple of friends of mine and heard they had trouble putting food on the table, I wanted to do something about that.
Burton Young: So we dedicated a portion of our sales for the month of April to just give to guides. Any guide could come to our website to sign up, put their name, address, email address. We checked it, verified, made sure they were full-time guides, and then we would give them a portion of our sales for the month. I wanted to do something more than that, so we started to look at the Captain's Relief Fund. I went to a couple of our guides. Some of them, I'm just humbled they even take my phone calls, but pretty much all of them do. Robert Crossett, Key West, came on; Chris Crossett. The list is long. Mike Goodwine, Ryan Harrington, a ton of guides stepped up to it. And basically they're raffling off for $10 a ticket, as many tickets as you want to buy. They're raffling off a trip. And we've had people win. We had a person win a trip with Chris Ross with $20 in raffle tickets. So that's a pretty expensive trip. They come to the website, they buy for that guide, and then we draw a winner for each and every guide. And we did $26,750 our first week.
Tom Rowland: Right on.
Burton Young: Which is pretty cool. We're able to take that money, split it up evenly, and give it to every guide who has signed up for our guide relief program on our website.
Tom Rowland: How many guides did you have signed up so far?
Burton Young: Over a hundred. The first week round of checks, because of our contribution and because of, like, Darcy had a two-week raffle where she raised almost $9,000 herself. Darcy Arrowhill, "Darcyizzle." So, add all that together, we were able to cut every guy a check for somewhere around $370, I believe. Which, it'll put food on the table. It's not a ton of money, but it was able to give them something where they had a hard time having income for that month.
Tom Rowland: There's a guy right here, TTH Mahoney, says he won a trip with Bear.
Burton Young: That's a good trip. I love Bear. I was actually down fishing with Bear just last week. I'm still feeling the effects of sailfishing in five- to six-foot seas. You guys had some weather down there last week.
Tom Rowland: Yeah. Well, that's really a great thing that you're doing. We're going to donate a trip as well. To make sure we don't have any scheduling problems, I never want to try to do something good and then have it backfire by someone not being able to schedule because the schedules don't meet up. In the past that's happened, and it's disappointing for somebody who buys a trip and then the schedules just never meet up, and our schedules are difficult. So what we're going to do is give a trip away with Saltwater Experience Charters. That way the schedule is way more flexible than our own schedule. And if we can go, we'll jump on the boat and go as well, but no guarantees.
Burton Young: I still got to get on a boat and go fishing with you, Tom.
Tom Rowland: Yeah, we're going to do that. We're going to definitely do that.
Tom Rowland: So do you have any kind of forecast about how many more guides are going to need help? Are you seeing more guides sign up every single day? You've got kind of a wider net, no pun intended, than just a sole focus on the Florida Keys, which is obviously a problem. The Florida Keys is a problem because it is literally closed. So if you don't have local clients, you're pretty much out of luck. But what about the rest of the state? What about outside of the state, South Carolina, North Carolina?
Burton Young: It's open to everybody. This is something we've done; we've opened it up to anybody. I know yesterday we mailed checks to Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Louisiana, Texas. So we've had pretty much a whole coastal region. It looks like to me anywhere that Barracuda's nets are, which is that whole coastal area, wherever you use these cast nets, people are aware of what we're doing. I'd like to get the message out more. I'd like to raise more money. I'm trying right now to form a 501(c)(3) and a number of different things to get this going. I'm trying to raise as much as possible to take care of as much as we can for these guys, because these guys are missing twenty thousand dollars a month. So it's not a drop in the bucket. Even if it's only four hundred dollars per guide per week, it's not much, it's probably not going to put a dent in that, but we could do something.
Tom Rowland: Man, when you're a fishing guide, that can be the difference between keeping your head above water and not.
Burton Young: Yep. So we're trying. We've had to form a 501(c)(3) on this, so I'm actually going to try and take it into a constant thing where we're constantly generating some kind of revenue and dropping it in there. Trying to form a board right now, people who could decide where that money goes. So it'll be more than just corona. Hopefully, down the road, it'll turn into something for red tide outbreaks and hurricanes. When guys are hurt, the board can release money out to it. We've got some creative ways to generate money to put in there. So I think we're going to keep this thing going in the future and have it there, maybe more at the ready than kind of catching up from behind.
Tom Rowland: Well, that's great. You're right.
Burton Young: Thank you. I'm trying to get other companies involved. Other companies are looking at getting involved, and we're looking at donating a portion of all of our sales every year to it and make it a national thing, just keep it always out there. Because a lot of guys don't have anything to fall back on. It's a sport we do because we love it. It's a business we do because we love it. And sometimes it doesn't afford you the opportunities really to have that money in the bank when you need it. Especially times like this, when February hits and then March we're shut down. That was the perfect storm for these guys. For everybody. Hospitality workers, everybody's feeling it. But for our business, guides are the backbone. So we've got to do something.
Tom Rowland: There are so many guides that talk about the perfect storm and the worst possible time of the year for this to happen. I was explaining it to somebody, and a lot of people that are listening right now know this inside and out. But other people listen to this podcast and don't really know the fishing business as well as people who are entrenched in it. For, let's say, the Florida Keys and really most of South Florida, the months of March, April, May, June...
Burton Young: That's it.
Tom Rowland: That is where people will work every single day.
Burton Young: Running two trips a day. I talked to some guys, they run three. Three trips a day.
Tom Rowland: A day, for that short period of time. And some people, when things are good, a lot of guys could choose. Like, do I want to work three trips a day for four months and then take the rest of the year off, or take the summer off, or go spend some time in Montana or Idaho or Wyoming, do something different in the summertime? Would I rather just put all my focus on that time and then not as much on the rest of the year? And some people do. And those people are the ones that are really suffering, because even if this clears up, they're not getting the business that they would normally have this time of the year. Three trips a day for ninety days in a row.
Burton Young: It's crazy.
Tom Rowland: But they also haven't developed the business for July and August and September because they're usually not even in town. And that's a bad situation, because there's only so many trips going around even on good years. Once the kids go back to school, the tourism really changes and you don't have as many people. So you might be fishing on the weekends, but it's hard to get trips during the week. You have to develop that business over many years so that you have people calling for March, April trips, and you're like, well, I don't have any days. They say, well, I really want to go fishing with you. Then you have to take that person and say, okay, let me spend some time communicating with you, and explain that if you really want to fish with me, there are other times of the year that you can do that. Maybe in September. Let me tell you about the fishing in September, and you basically have to sell them on that. And then they come, and that becomes their trip. September. Great, I love it. But that takes many years to develop. So that's a tough thing right now.
Burton Young: And then you have the other side of it where you can't move the fish around. So for us, it's tarpon season right now. Tarpon season is huge here in Tampa Bay. The guides get more money for their trips. They're running more trips, they're doing it back to back. And those tarpon leave, and they're not going to wait for coronavirus to come around or not. When those fish are gone, they're gone. And catching a tarpon, to a lot of people, is a once-in-a-lifetime event. It's not something that happens often. It's not something they have the option to do year round. So you can't move the fish around, you can't move the dates around, and you can't change the weather. So it's definitely hard on everybody. And you're right, if you didn't develop your business, if you're a young guide and you haven't developed that business yet for the summertime, it's very unfortunate.
Tom Rowland: Yeah. But I do believe that when things open up, the economy is going to come roaring back, and people are really tired of spending a lot of time in their house, and they're going to be ready to go do something different. And that includes traveling and fishing, and gas is super cheap.
Burton Young: It's a different diesel deal. Bad time to buy a diesel truck.
Tom Rowland: Well...
Burton Young: My truck is a diesel, and I'm like, oh, it's $2.70 a gallon.
Tom Rowland: I always say that I'm responsible for that, because for many years I debated on going to a diesel truck, and the diesel was just so cheap. And about the year I bought my first diesel truck, it went up and it never came back down. And I was like, man, I bought a truck to get cheaper fuel, and it never works. So sorry about that. I messed that up for everybody, I think.
Burton Young: No, it's funny. The new Ford F-150 came out with diesel. It's a little six-cylinder. I still get like 30 miles to the gallon on it. So I'll pay $2.64, I fill my tank up, I've got 700 miles, and it's still empty. It's great.
Tom Rowland: It tows well. I mean, man, a diesel truck tows great.
Burton Young: So much better. I've always dragged boats all around the state all the time, so it's nice to have that extra torque in there.
Tom Rowland: So let's get back to when you decided to start Barracuda. You were in the tech business. Did you just get pulled into that?
Burton Young: I've been in the tech industry ever since I came out of the army, and I was over it. I was bored with it. I'm really good at tech, but I don't like it. I've never been that guy who will sit there and set up gaming systems and play video games. I don't do any of that. I'm not a big Star Wars fan, so it doesn't really fit in.
Tom Rowland: Well, what did you do in the army?
Burton Young: I was in the army for about five years. I was all over the place.
Tom Rowland: Did you learn some of the tech skills there, or did you already have them?
Burton Young: No. When I came out of the army, I went to college at University of Texas. Then I came home back to Florida, and I went to a tech school. And I just took to it really well and understood it. For some reason, my brain works in that direction. So I got heavy into it and ended up in the medical field, and I had a great run and a great life with that. But then I was bored with it, I was done with it. I fished my whole life. I started throwing a cast net when I was seven years old, and I was looking for a cast net, trying to find something that was great. I had a custom-made one that was made by a guy here in Saint Pete who had died. It started ripping up and falling apart, and I started looking at new nets. I bought every premium net out there, every single one of them. Every single one, I didn't really appreciate for one reason or another. So I started making my own.
Burton Young: I learned how to actually make cast nets, and I started putting nets together and tried different things, and came up with a design after 127 handmade nets that I thought was perfect. And a couple of guys I gave it to thought it was perfect, and we ended up having to go find manufacturing, put that together, and Barracuda was born. Honestly, I almost gave up halfway in between, and kind of took a bet. Somebody bet me I couldn't make it successful. Once you bet me on anything, I'm going to go heads down and just kill it.
Tom Rowland: Wait, hold on. What was the reason that you almost gave up on it?
Burton Young: It's a lot of work. Manufacturing cast nets is a very tough business. There are no monofilament mesh machines here in the United States, so everything has to be made overseas. I don't care if anybody says it's an American-made net. It may be assembled somewhat here in the US, but it's coming from China. And when you go to China, a lot of the companies who manufacture them don't really care. They're just pumping them out. They have these huge factories where they're pumping out nets. There's no consistency. I was lucky enough to find a fourth-generation net maker over in the Qingdao province of China, and they really do great work with us. I talk to my guy over there every other day. We're always on production things. It's pretty cool. But I still fought the made-in-America thing. I wanted to make everything right here in the US. And you cannot make nets here in the US. Even the big net makers on the East Coast, they're buying all their mesh from China, buying all their pieces from China, and then just assembling it. And a lot of them are using illegal labor to do it.
Tom Rowland: So let me ask you this. With all that information you just gave me, what's the difference in time between hand-making a net yourself and a machine making a net?
Burton Young: So you cannot make mesh under one inch out of monofilament by hand. You can't do it. Your fingers will be bleeding. It's torture. So all the mesh itself, even though our nets are handmade, all the mesh comes off a machine. It's the only way you can make monofilament mesh. Now if you're trying to make a three-sixteenth inch, which you guys call Mahua nets down there, if you're trying to make that by hand, you'd stop at five feet. You get a five-foot Mahua net, that'd be it. It's just too many knots, too much work. So all the mesh has to be made by machine. We make it basically in sheets, like cloth, then we cut it into a pattern, and then we sew those patterns together. If you look at most nets today, most of your premium mid-level nets are panel nets, which means there's like six panels, maybe less, maybe more, sewn together. You can also make a conically sewn net. There are a couple of manufacturers out there who still make them. They end up with a nice witch's hat in them. There's no panels; they actually sew the whole mesh all the way around. But to make those panel nets, everything's made by hand after the mesh comes off the machine.
Burton Young: Even if you take it to that point and make them here in the US, getting the labor at a rate that can actually make the net affordable is almost impossible. You're talking twelve to fourteen hours to make one net. So multiply that by skilled labor, you're going to need about $18 an hour. Do the math on that. Your labor rate's more than a typical net would be coming out of China.
Tom Rowland: Speaking of coming out of China, how does the coronavirus affect that net-making business in China?
Burton Young: I've seen some manufacturers say that they're out of stock because of China and manufacturing. I have not experienced a single slowdown on my manufacturing capabilities. We have experienced a shipping slowdown, but not a manufacturing slowdown. Our last shipment that was coming in actually had supplies that were needed for New York on the boat, and they were needed immediately. So they actually rerouted the ship from Tampa all the way around to New York, unloaded the whole entire boat, brought it back, causing a five-week delay. But I haven't experienced anything. I've heard people say it, but nothing. China, from what I gather from talking to my people over there, it seems like they were hit mainly in the center of the country. Where our nets are made is right on the coast. So I don't think they had much of a case of it over there at all. But it was definitely an interesting learning process to figure out how to manufacture in China and all the intricacies of it.
Tom Rowland: So did you have to go there a lot to do that?
Burton Young: Oh, one. All it took was one time.
Tom Rowland: One time. So you can do it in one time because you know enough about making nets that you can judge almost immediately what you're seeing?
Burton Young: Yep. And we're pushing really hard right now to bring all of our manufacturing back to the US. We have a new line of reels coming out. We have a hook extractor that just came out. We're trying to move everything to the US because, obviously, we want everything to be made here. But the nets are still going to be... we're trying. We're going to try and get them here in two years, but it's difficult.
Tom Rowland: So let's talk about the hook extractor, because that is amazing. I love those things.
Burton Young: Yeah, it's great. There was one that was made years ago by a company that went out of business.
Tom Rowland: That's when I was wondering, what happened? Did the patent run out?
Burton Young: Well, that's part of it. The company was making it years ago. They went out of business, and he had a patent on the way it worked. So the patent ran out in January, and we were like, okay, we're going to pick it up. But he was just suing people. Anybody who tried to actually make the hook extractor, he would just sue real quick. I don't think he gathered any damages from what I read, because he was hiding his patent, and the judges just kind of threw it out, but they'd say he can't make it. But we started making it. I wanted to make it here in the US. I wanted it to be our first US product. Actually, Dylan Hubbard from Hubbard's Marina called me up and said, hey, will you make this? And we started work on it, and it's robust. It's durable. We've had a couple issues in the early production. That's all changed. Now they're super thick. You can't bend them, you can't break them. They're going to last a lifetime.
Burton Young: And they're made out of 304 stainless, where typically every other extractor I've seen out there comes out of China. And China metals, you could order something in 304 and it might be close to 304, but you might end up getting 301.
Tom Rowland: Wait, I don't know what that means. 304, 301, what... okay, quality of metal.
Burton Young: Sorry. I deal in metal all day long right now. You want to talk about titanium? I will bore you to death with the new titanium reels we have coming out. So there are different grades of stainless steel. Not everything is actually not going to rust. 304 is where you get to the point where it will not rust. 301, you may get some surface rust. 316 is your highest level of pretty much rust resistance. What that means in stainless steels is that there's less iron in it, so it's going to become softer. Like, when you get to 304, 316, sometimes it feels like Play-Doh. It's kind of cool. So we use 304 stainless, which is the first level where it's not going to rust at all.
Burton Young: And we make them here in the US, which is a big thing. Because when you start getting stuff out of China, I can go to China and say I want everything made out of 304, and half my order will be 304, and the other half may be in the 400s, where it's actually going to rust out on you. So that's another difference in ours. Being in the US, one of the big differences is we control the quality of everything.
Tom Rowland: So you can make that in the US?
Burton Young: That's made in the US right now. We have a factory right here in Saint Pete. The new reels we have coming out are all made here in Saint Pete. And those are solid titanium.
Tom Rowland: So that hook extractor, I have, I don't know, a half dozen of those things that I covet. I will not leave them with Rich. Rich is really bad; I call it the black hole. If you leave something on his boat, you never see it again. So anybody that goes with him, don't leave anything in the boat, because here's a little secret, you'll never see it again. So I do not leave those on the boat. I bring a little bag, I've got my hook extractors in there, and they go with me wherever I go, because they became very difficult to get. And the whole key was the end of it, the angle of how the thing was. There were many other brands on the market that had these things, but they didn't work. They were nothing but...
Burton Young: Glass and hold up.
Tom Rowland: Yeah. Well, but they also didn't take the hook out. You could just grab it and hold onto it, and the fish turns and the hook would come out, but not like what you have. The way that this is, the way that you pull the trigger and the hook comes out, it's...
Burton Young: It's set up backwards and pops out.
Tom Rowland: It's genius, man. And do you have any idea on making longer ones? How long are you going to make?
Burton Young: So we have an eight-and-a-half-inch model. People, when they first see it, say it's too short. But for inshore fishing, I love it. It's the best little extractor ever. That's why we made it that length; as I was using it, we tried different lengths, and that eight and a half was just perfect. Then we have what we call the offshore model, which is 13 and a half inches. But to keep it, I mean, we pulled a seven-foot sandbar shark two months ago out of Boca Grande with a nine-aught hook in its mouth, and it literally flipped it right out. It was the craziest thing.
Tom Rowland: Yeah, I would even vote for a longer one. Because if you're on a big offshore boat, you've got to reach down to the water. I'm not the tallest guy in the world, but you know... not only are you staying away from the sharks and the kingfish and stuff like that, the dangerous parts of them, but you're also able to reach them without pulling them out of the water at all. So it might be too long for some applications, but man, that's...
Burton Young: No, you're right. That is something I was definitely thinking about, because I'm primarily an inshore fisherman my whole life. I've been fishing snook, redfish, trout. I actually saw bonefish tailing for the first time when I was in The Keys two weeks ago.
Tom Rowland: It was pretty cool there right now.
Burton Young: It was crazy. We were coming down from Sugarloaf to Key West. I look over and I see all this tailing, and Bear was in the truck next to me. I'm like, Bear, what is that? He's like, that's bonefish. I was like, really? Right there. We're driving down US 1, and there's bonefish tailing right as the sun's cracking. It was one of those moments you're like, give me one of those skinny water skiffs and a fly rod. I got to try.
Tom Rowland: That's where the FOMO comes out. You start to think about pulling over at the closest boat ramp and running over there, because you know it's happening, or it might be happening where you're going. You don't know.
Burton Young: Yeah. No, we ran offshore. We got permit that day. Key West permit's been a bucket-list fish of mine. That was definitely fun.
Tom Rowland: Yeah. You know, I filmed a TV show like that one time. We were going to go fish for bonefish, and it was a show called... what was that called? It's called In Search of Flywater, I think. And we shot it with film, which was hard, because with videotape you can shoot anything. With film, you have to pick and choose what you want because it's super expensive. So anyway, this guy was having kind of a hard time catching anything. We had spent the day before trying to catch a bonefish on fly, and it was not happening, man. It was not going to happen. So we're driving up, and I look off to the side right there by Spanish Harbor Bridge, and the tarpon are rolling right there. And I'm like, oh, this is the show. This is the show. We're going to do this show today. And it worked out. But you've got to keep your eyes open on the road.
Burton Young: You do. It's amazing what you can find out there. You may be going fishing for one species one day and go a completely different direction. I know I would stop the car for tarpon for sure. I haven't landed a tarpon yet this year, and the tarpon have been here for a couple weeks. I'm getting the itch right now. I'm waiting on a boat to be built. My old boat's sold, and I'm waiting on one to come out of production here in the next three or four weeks. It's pretty exciting.
Tom Rowland: Right on. That's always a nice time.
Burton Young: It's my first ever custom-built boat. It's exciting. Putting twin Mercurys on there, it's going to be an amazing boat. Can't wait to get it.
Tom Rowland: Right on, that's awesome. So back to getting your cast net company started. You go over there and figure out your manufacturing. What is it that you decided you're going to do differently that gives you the idea that you're going to... I mean, there are a lot of cast nets, right?
Burton Young: There are a lot of cast nets. You know, if you ever dive with a cast net and watch the way it sinks, it's going to make you rethink everything. Because everybody throws a cast net, and they hit a pancake, it sinks like that, and they grab bait. Cast nets kind of form a birdcage. Some of them will form a teepee in the water as soon as they hit the water. So we wanted to try and change the way we did that. If you start at the top of our net, we'll give you a 30-foot handline. It's a big cushy handline, it's not going to cut into your wrist too much. We do a four-section horn on there, which keeps the braille lines from tangling up in the lead line at the bottom.
Burton Young: The mesh was really hard. We actually went through a million different types of monofilament trying to figure out what kind of mono to use. We all know monofilament, people will argue different parts of it, but if you take mono and throw it in the water, it floats. If you break the surface tension, it will still float. Sometimes it'll be neutrally buoyant. But you can increase the density of monofilament. So we were able to do that to make a monofilament that is somewhat negatively buoyant, which makes the net sink better. We put more mesh in our net so they open up more flat. There's also a secret thing we do to them. I've never told anybody. If you look at our net, you can figure it out. But you have to look at it next to another net, and you go, oh, I finally see it. It makes the net form a birdcage in the water. So the top almost goes flat, the sides collapse down a little bit, and it sinks that way. And it was really simple the way we did it.
Burton Young: And then one thing we really do is, we make heavy nets because you have to make a heavy net for the market, but we really focus on making lighter nets. You know when you pull up on a school of threadfins out in the water and they're up high, and you throw a net on them and you never catch one of those threadfins?
Tom Rowland: Oh, it happens to you too.
Burton Young: Oh, it happens to everybody, right? You're like, oh, my net doesn't sink fast enough. It's actually the opposite of that. Your net doesn't sink slow enough. Because no matter what happens when you throw that net, they're going to scatter. But if you have a lighter net that takes longer to sink, the bait will actually come back underneath and you'll hammer it. I was talking to one of our captains last night, I was over at his house, and he was out there with one of our 14-foot flats nets. It's a super light, point-eight-pound-per-foot net, and everybody's trying to catch these threads. Nobody could get them. He threw the light net and just hammered them. So we're trying to adjust what people think about cast nets. The heavier the cast net is, the faster it'll sink. That's a true statement. But it also changes the attitude of the net in the water, makes the net teepee up on you, not birdcage up, and makes it close up faster.
Tom Rowland: It certainly makes it harder to throw.
Burton Young: Yep. So we tried all sorts of different models. There have been people who come out with different nets out there. We worked on one that had a soft lead line on it, so the lead was covered. Can't get it to sink right no matter what you do. You can try left and right; it won't sink properly in deep water. You can watch it. Dive with your nets, watch what they do. So the traditional open exposed lead is going to sink faster, it sinks better. But we have tried some other innovations, and it seems like I think we have the perfect cast net out there for us and what we do. A lot of people love our nets, and we've had rave reviews about them. So it's definitely what I think is the best net out there. But yeah, we have different weights and everything else. What's really funny to me is everybody always thinks heavier, heavier, heavier, and really you don't want heavier. Our 1.25-pound-per-foot net is probably the most versatile, and it'll work perfectly on deepwater baits. You just have to know how to throw it.
Tom Rowland: And when you say you have to know how to throw it, what do you mean?
Burton Young: So when you throw a deep net, it's obviously going to sink right there. The current's not going to affect it. If you're throwing a lighter net, your net's going to move as it goes down the water column. So if you're looking at baits that are maybe 20 feet down and the current's going from right to left, you're going to want to throw a little bit far right to let it go down to where those baits are to the left and let it sink slowly. It's going to go down there, it's going to be more open, it's going to be more cast off, and it's going to catch you more baits overall.
Tom Rowland: Gotcha.
Burton Young: And honestly, throwing a lighter net is so much easier, right? I love our point-eight-pound-per-foot net. You give me a 1.6-pound-per-foot net, I don't love it.
Tom Rowland: What about mullet nets? Because that's where I've had a really hard time. The net is so heavy, because the mullet are super fast. I went fishing one time with Ryan Nitz, and I had this net. It was so heavy. And I could open it maybe a dozen times.
Burton Young: And you're in shape.
Tom Rowland: I'm in shape, and I'm wondering what other people do. It's like, man, I need to work on my technique. Obviously, I could have better technique, but the thing was so freaking heavy that he was like, well, let me take a swipe at it. He could barely lift it up. It was just way too heavy. I don't even know who would be throwing that thing. What about mullet nets? How do you pick the weight on the mullet?
Burton Young: As your mesh expands, meaning as your mesh gets bigger... so like, three-sixteenth is the smallest mesh we make, and we make all the way up to inch and a half. As your mesh expands, you can put more lead on it, and it'll sink appropriately for that size. So a mullet net, you can throw 30 pounds of lead on there, and it's going to stay open. It's going to hammer your mullet for you. It'll wear you out. I know that you guys down there consider a mullet net a three-quarter-inch mesh, right? Up here, we consider it bigger.
Tom Rowland: Well, you'll see people throwing a one-inch.
Burton Young: Can you?
Tom Rowland: Yeah, because the mullet are a good size. A lot of places you're catching them, they're really good size. They're not going to go through a one-inch. But the other thing that's happening is that the wider the mesh, the faster the net's going to sink, regardless of how much...
Burton Young: More lead you can put on it without closing it up too fast on itself.
Tom Rowland: Right. Because it's like an umbrella. If you have an umbrella that has no holes in it, it's going to be really hard to pull that thing down. And if you have an umbrella that is made out of fishnet or whatever, it's going to be easier. And the bigger those holes are, the faster that's going to sink, even with the same amount of lead. Right?
Burton Young: Yep. No matter what.
Tom Rowland: I'm always looking for one that's light enough that I can open it as many times as I need to in order to catch the bait, which a lot of times is a lot. It's not every day that you just go out there and throw one time and get what you need. So you're making nets for everything from Mahua and maybe even smaller nets all the way up to a big mullet net. You have a company that is dealing with all types of fishermen: good fishermen, bad fishermen, people that have never thrown a net, people thinking about throwing a net, kids, adults, strong people, weak people. How do you, in trying to sell nets, cut through all the BS and make it very simple for someone to know what net they need?
Burton Young: We have a video up on YouTube, and it's really funny to bring that up because we're actually remaking it. We have a video up on YouTube on how to select nets, and selecting nets is pretty hard. We are going to start running what's called Barracuda Bait University down here in Saint Pete pretty soon. People can come and learn everything they want to know about cast nets, how to throw them, how to catch bait, how to find bait, every piece of it. But our video on how to select nets is actually pretty good, pretty detailed.
Tom Rowland: I put up some of those shots that you sent me last night. You can do pictures behind all this stuff.
Burton Young: That's cool. So yeah, we've done a lot of training. We travel around, do a lot of training. A couple days ago, somebody posted on Facebook that they bought one of my nets, and they were trying to learn how to throw it. I realized he lived ten minutes away from me, so I drove over there and taught him how to throw a net. We show up at a lot of tournaments. We've done a lot of stuff from Key West all the way up to the Panhandle. We've done stuff on the East Coast, in North Carolina, South Carolina, teaching people how to throw nets. Because that's a big thing, learning how to throw a net. My neighbor taught me when I was seven, and I'll never forget it.
Tom Rowland: When you learned how to throw a net when you were seven years old, what technique did your neighbor show you? Because I find that kind of interesting. When you're teaching a kid, what size do you teach the kid to throw? Because it could be a disaster. If you give them too heavy or too big of a net, they're never going to be able to throw it. But if you teach them the right technique, a small, very weak person can throw a pretty large net. So I'm just wondering what the technique was that you learned.
Burton Young: He taught me on a six-foot. I don't remember the mesh size. It was probably three-eighths. And he taught me the put-it-in-your-mouth, hold-it-with-two-hands, break-in-half, and throw-it method. Or, actually, no. Hold it in one hand, hold it open with your right, and just throw it. And for a six-footer, that works perfectly. But anytime you get bigger than six feet, you typically want to go to... I go to a triple load. Some people break the net in half and just throw it that way still. I like the triple load because it opens every time. It's a consistent pancake. There's nothing that really messes it up. It gives you the chance to go through your net when you're loading it to make sure there's no tangles. That was actually the method I use now, taught to me by Will Osborne. He's from Cortez, Florida. He's a great captain down there. He's actually in a raffle right now. I've done some amazing fishing with Will. But he's multigenerational. His throw has been handed down from his granddad, I think, and his dad. And to me, it's as easy a throw as any out there. A lot of people throw it similar ways, but Will has some secrets to his throw that work great. And if you look up, I think we have Bay University part one still online, which teaches you how to throw a net.
Tom Rowland: Okay. So for people that don't know exactly what you're talking about with a triple load or a double load, kind of explain that real quick.
Burton Young: You take the net, you roll your line up, you fold it in half or however you're going to put it in your left hand, and then you take what's hanging down. You break that into three parts, a little bit less than three parts, and put a little bit over your shoulder. You break the rest of the net in half and throw it that way. There's a video on it. I can try and give you a lesson right now.
Tom Rowland: I've got a net over there, but we won't have good audio. Maybe right at the end you can throw it, at the end of the deal. But that's cool.
Tom Rowland: So what about size, mesh, weight? How do you tell somebody which one of your nets fits?
Burton Young: It's based on where they're fishing. If they're fishing the flats, I always tell people our flats net is perfect for shallow water. It's got longer leads on it, it doesn't have the ball lead on it. It's not going to pull a bunch of grass up on your boat, it's not going to get your boat dirty. It's all you need to sink in four feet of water. Obviously, there are some special uses for it. Like I said, when you're catching those big threadfins on the surface and you want to try and get them, it works amazing for that. But that's generally a five-foot-or-less depth net. There is no perfect net. That's the issue with everything. So, what is the one net I can buy that's going to catch me bait year round? Just like fish, everything changes in the water. Everything changes seasonally. One time a year, your white baits, or pilchers as you guys call them in the Keys, they scale, they're going to get smaller and then they're going to get bigger. And if you are throwing on small baits and you have a three-inch mesh net, which is what people typically love to use, you're going to get what's called a Christmas tree. All your bait's going to be gilled up in your net, and you're going to be frustrated.
Burton Young: So I always say, if white bait is your primary goal, you want a quarter inch and you want a three-eighths net. Because certain times of year that bait's going to get bigger, and the Mahua is going to mix in with it, or glass minnows. And when that happens, you're going to want that mesh big enough for the Mahua to get out but the white bait to stay in. That was actually what we were experiencing when we were throwing down on the Marquesas two weeks ago. All we had was a quarter-inch net. So the Mahua was getting stuck in it, and the white bait, we were getting the white bait, but our net looked like trash afterwards with Mahua stuck in it. So there's no perfect size net. If white bait's your thing, I say buy a quarter inch and buy a three-eighths. Buy whatever length you can throw. I prefer to throw 12-foot nets. I'd say if you're a fisherman and you're serious about it, don't get anything smaller than a 10-foot net unless you have a disability that holds you back from throwing that size. There's no reason to. And a triple load will open up a 10-foot every time. And the weights vary based on where you're going to be throwing. I think you guys down in The Keys, one of the favorite places of the guys I fish with down there is the Marquesas to catch bait. That's three, four feet of water. You don't need anything heavier than 1.25. You're not going to be throwing deeper than that.
Burton Young: So there's a whole formula that goes into net selection, but if you think you can have one net on your boat and get it done every time with that, it's not going to happen. It's just like fishing rods and reels. If you walk inside my house and look in the corner, you're going to see a rod rack with a thousand rods and reels in it. Some of them have different applications. Some of them I'm at the tackle store and I'm just like, oh, that looks nice, I want to try that out. I've got everything from G. Loomis to St. Croix. I've tried every rod out there. I'm kind of a gear junkie when it comes to that. But yeah, there's a different application for every net. Same as a rod and a reel. You don't buy a grouper stick and go trout fishing.
Tom Rowland: Right, I got it. What about when you do get the Christmas tree, which is pretty much inevitable? It happens to everybody, especially when you're not as experienced and you look and get excited that there's bait, you actually found some bait, which might be kind of a new thing. Like, oh my god, there's some bait. So you throw on it, and it Christmas trees your whole net, right? Because you don't have enough experience, or maybe the depth of the water is such that you look and it's like, those look kind of small, but maybe I'm good. You get them, and then all of a sudden your net's a Christmas tree. There are many techniques to getting this out. From a net manufacturer, what's the best way to get all that stuff out without tearing your net up?
Burton Young: If you get it, there's no easy way to fix it, right? So the best thing to do is stretch your net out and take the back of your bait net, or dip net, and just run along the side of it. It'll knock off the heads of the fish and they typically fall through. Do it a couple times and you're good to go. Somebody just commented a dip net, Bryce Rogers. Yeah, so that's it. Take the dip net and just run along the bag. If it's your last throw of the day, or if you're just going to keep throwing the net with those fish stuck in it, which I've seen people do, when you get back to the dock, if you can find an open place, open your net up and leave it in the parking lot. Let the birds pick through it. It works. It's unfortunate, but once it happens, there's no easy way to really get it out. Chum bag works too. Rub your chum bag down the back of it.
Tom Rowland: It's funny that people have been using a dip net forever, and it turns out that that's the best way. Like a dip net, actually, without even the net. If you've got an old dip net where the net has torn up, and you don't have... The one thing I've made a mistake of is you'll have like tie wraps holding on the netting to a dip net, and then you start doing it with that and the tie wraps start ripping your net. That's not a good thing. You don't want to do that. You're only going to do that a little bit. A pressure washer is something that someone is suggesting too.
Burton Young: I've seen him actually use the pressure washer on the net, and it does work. That's Ken Mercer. He's actually a friend of mine. He's a captain in the Punta Gorda, Cape Coral area. And yeah, I've seen him use the pressure washer. It works.
Tom Rowland: Now what about, in your opinion... you always hear people putting their net in fabric softener and taking care of this stuff. I've always wondered, does that hurt the monofilament? Does it make the net weaker, so that when you're hitting it with a dip net, all of a sudden it starts to tear? Is that because of the fabric softener? What's your opinion on that kind of stuff?
Burton Young: It's not that it makes the net weaker. We don't suggest fabric softener. If you need to clean your net, use a five-gallon bucket with water, a couple drops of Dawn, sit it in there, let it soak for a couple hours, pull it out, hose it off, and then put it in a shady area to let it dry. Monofilament's plastic. So if you leave plastic out in the sun, it dries out. Anything that'll leach the oil out of the mono is bad, right? So any way you treat plastic when plastic dries out, that's what's going to happen to your mono. Fabric softener, what it does, it doesn't change the properties of the net at all. Everybody goes, oh, it makes my net feel softer. It doesn't make it feel softer, just like in clothing. It just puts kind of a slime layer on the outside of it. Makes it feel moist, but it doesn't actually absorb into the mono at all. All you're doing at that point is lubricating your knots, and a cast net is nothing but a series of over 10,000 knots. That's what it is.
Tom Rowland: Ten thousand knots in a 10-foot net?
Burton Young: More than 10,000 in a 10-foot net.
Tom Rowland: Yeah. Your hands would be bloody and tired if you tied that all by yourself.
Burton Young: Yep. But your lubricant is not good. So imagine taking a hook and tying it onto a piece of monofilament or a piece of fluorocarbon and then spraying WD-40 on it, or Corrosion X. You wouldn't do that, because it's going to loosen up your knot. It's going to make it more slippery. So putting fabric softener on a net is the worst thing you can do to it. From what I understand, that myth was actually started by a cast net manufacturer.
Tom Rowland: Oh, is that right?
Burton Young: To make it fall apart a little bit faster.
Tom Rowland: Oh. More sales. Yeah.
Burton Young: Yeah. It doesn't change anything. It may feel better in your hands the first time you throw it, but as soon as it hits saltwater, that slime layer is going to get washed off of the monofilament. It's going to feel just like it did before. It's just a texture thing, right? So I wouldn't use fabric softener. A couple drops of Dawn, not too much, just let it soak, then bring it out, spray it off, and let it dry in a shady place. And never lift your lead off the ground. Lifting your lead off the ground causes the net to stretch, and now you thought it was a three-eighths, it may turn into closer to a half inch.
Tom Rowland: Yeah, that's interesting. That is really interesting about the leads off the ground. I never really thought about that. I don't usually have something tall enough to get it off the ground, but that is interesting, because monofilament does stretch, just like a net will stretch, just like your leader or your fishing line. So that's a good suggestion. And then as far as keeping them in the boat, my feeling is that I keep them in a dive bag, because they can breathe.
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