Jared Raskob and Greg Dini: Balancing Guiding and Fatherhood in the Florida Keys

Full transcript of the Tom Rowland Podcast, Episode 415 — Jared Raskob & Greg Dini, Silver Kings — balancing guiding, fatherhood, and the relaunch of Silver Kings on Waypoint.

A Preview

Greg Dini: There's nothing better you can experience in life than having kids. It's made me a better person and allowed me to grow up, because I'm in that fight right now of trying to manage my time to have more time with them. All of us who push boats around know it's a very time-demanding career — we've got clients who love being on the water and want to be on our boats, and we only have so many days we can be out there. So I'd like to start doing the weekend thing like Jared's talking about. Right now, juggling schooling, paying for it, and putting money in the bank for college is demanding, but that's how it's changed my priorities. It's made me a much more well-rounded person in general. I'm Greg Dini.

Jared Raskob: I'm Jared Raskob.

Greg Dini: And this is the Tom Rowland Podcast.

Welcome to the Show

Tom Rowland: What's going on, everybody? Welcome to the podcast today. Got some really good guests for us — the host of Silver Kings, Jared Raskob, has taken over the show, and he's one of the hottest guides in the Florida Keys by far. The guy catches everything in the ocean. This year he's fishing with his good friend Greg Dini, who's also a Tom Rowland Podcast alum — we had a great show with him, so go back and check that one out if you haven't already. These guys are teaming up, and I really believe they're going to raise the bar. They're great fishermen, they've got great production people behind them, and they're going to be on Waypoint, which I'm excited about because Waypoint needs more great productions, and this is definitely going to be one of them. So stand by for a good conversation with Jared Raskob and Greg Dini. And listen — there were some audio issues. I don't know what was going on with my internet, but we're going to make the very best of this, and if it just wasn't working out, we agreed we'd get them on again, so we may have some abbreviated conversations. If you notice any edits, it wasn't because we were trying to cut anything out of what they were saying or what I was saying — it's because the internet was really spotty and really bad. So this is one of a few podcasts we're going to have with these guys. I love them, they're awesome, and I'm excited to have them on. So here we go with Greg Dini and Jared Raskob from Silver Kings.

Breaking the Ice

Jared Raskob: Like two losers, dude. Terrible.

Tom Rowland: Do you want to try it again?

Jared Raskob: Well, you know, I'm kind of one of those guys where the first take is what it is. That's just natural.

Tom Rowland: I'm with you, man. That's it — there's no acting, there's no makeup around this joint. This is it. What you see is what you get.

Jared Raskob: That's it. No makeup, nothing. Just straight up, just love.

Tom Rowland: Well, that's how we're gonna start this thing — we've started it right now. That's it, that was the intro. Can you believe it?

Greg Dini: Hey, it should be.

Tom Rowland: It is. So what are you guys up to, man? Everybody doing alright?

Jared Raskob: Everything's great, man. Just fishing like crazy, and, like you guys all know, having kids completely shifts your priorities in the best way possible. When you think you're tired after a day of fishing, the real game starts as soon as you go pick them up from daycare.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, I'm with you, man. I watch you guys on social media and it looks a lot like me a long time ago with my little kids. So Jared, what are the ages of your children?

Jared Raskob: I have Rhett, who just turned two last week, and Reid, who's turning four in March.

Tom Rowland: Two and four. Greg, what's your situation?

Greg Dini: I've got an eight, a ten, and a four. And, man, they're making me age pretty quick, I can tell you that much.

Tom Rowland: Well, how did your priorities change? That's what you said first, Jared, when you first mentioned the kids.

Fatherhood Changes Everything

Jared Raskob: I think the biggest way it changed is that I was always someone who wanted to stay out as long as I could — the more time you spend on the water, the better you get, and if you put in an extra two hours a day over a year, you basically gain another year and fast-track things. Now it's gotten to the point where, fishing six days a week, I still try to leave pretty early even in the wintertime, but I have a deadline to get back to — going to get my kids from daycare. Not only do I have to get them, I want to get them. I want to be with them, I want to spend that time. So I think my priorities shifted mostly in my guiding. That was a big reason I stepped back from tournaments a few years back — there was just so much more prep and dedication to it, and my mind wasn't in that place anymore. But in my guiding, it's still there — I still want to produce for my clients day in and day out, I want them to see I'm giving a hard effort, so I still do that. But basically, being with my kids is everything I want to be doing, so I take off every Sunday now. That's my way of getting back the piece I might be missing during the week.

Tom Rowland: You know, that's exactly what I did. My wife encouraged it — now you're going to take every Sunday off — and that became something so important to me after a while. It was hard at first, because that's the day a lot of people want to fish, Saturday and Sunday, so you're not doing charters, but the time with the family is really super important, man. It's good to hear you're doing that, because not a lot of people do. I think a lot of guides find it tough to stay married and tough to raise a family, but if you get your priorities in line like it sounds like you have, that makes a huge difference. So was that a decision you and your wife made together, or did you make it?

Jared Raskob: No, I made that decision. Everybody always says there's no love like a child, and you hear it from so many people — my parents' friends, maybe not my parents, they'd probably say that helped me too much — but the truth is, it is reality. When I had my first child, Reid, I already started slowing back on tournaments. Then, about six months in, I'd be gone for ten days straight, come home, and miss his first word sometimes, or his first steps — those big calm moments in their life. And I thought, the extra dollar and the extra time away, you can never get it back. So next year I'm thinking I'll take off every Saturday and Sunday.

Tom Rowland: Nice, that's awesome. Greg, has that been your experience too moving into parenthood?

Greg Dini: Yeah, it definitely changes your priorities. In my opinion there's nothing better you can experience in life than having kids. It's made me a better person, it's allowed me to grow up, because I'm in that fight right now of trying to manage my time to have more time with them. All of us who push boats around know it's a very time-demanding career — we've got clients who love being on the water and want to be on our boats, and we only have so many days we can be out there. So I'd like to start doing the weekend thing like Jared's talking about. Right now, the juggle of schooling, paying for it, and putting money away for college is demanding, but that's how it's changed my priorities. It's made me a much more well-rounded person in general.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, interesting. That's so cool to hear you guys taking the time off and really valuing and cherishing this time, because a bunch of old people told me you blink and it'll be over, and now I'm an old person telling you there's no more truth than that. You blink and — my daughter's seventeen, both my boys are living in Montana, they're twenty-three and twenty-one and a seventeen-year-old girl — and I swear, man, I can remember like it was yesterday when they were the ages of your kids. So here's another old person telling you that's absolutely the case. Every moment you put in is like a dollar in a bank account — it's an investment, and you will never be sorry you spent that much time with your kids. That's awesome, I'm really happy to hear it. So the other thing I was happy to hear is that you guys have some news. What's your news?

Silver Kings Season Seven

Jared Raskob: Well, the news is that Silver Kings is coming back for season seven, and I'm super excited about the new partnership with one of my dearest friends, Greg — a phenomenal fisherman himself, but also great with production and social media. There's just so much love between us after all these years. I met him when I was twenty years old in Louisiana, so we're coming up on an eleven-year friendship, and I think there are some big things happening, especially with Greg coming on to help run things behind the scenes.

Greg Dini: Absolutely. Knowing Jared now for the better part of eleven years, watching his career grow as a guide and seeing what he's done from a success level — getting the opportunity to work with a guy like that comes around once in a lifetime. I'm just very fortunate to get to work with Jared and Silver Kings. We've got so many great ideas, and the show is going to go in a direction that reaches a much bigger audience. Jared and I are both excited to get the process started.

The Legendary Grand Slam Episode

Tom Rowland: Well, my main question is — I watched the episode you guys have as a kind of screen test, something you can show sponsors, something you can look at and go, yeah, that turned out pretty good — when Greg was a guest on Silver Kings. What did you guys catch that day, like everything in the ocean? Seriously, that's a pretty damn high bar. How do you even hope to measure up to that? That's the most fish I've ever seen on a TV show — you caught a permit, bonefish, tarpon, redfish, and a snook. Maybe you caught some other things too. It was pretty impressive.

Greg Dini: That's all to this guy Jared — he's the one who can find them. We definitely talked about it before we filmed, and you just never know. You catch one fish at a time, and when it happens, it all comes together, and it just came together that day. But with a guy who knows what he's doing like Jared does, and you can't spend too much time on one species, which is something Jared's really good at.

Tom Rowland: So was that day — there are plenty of days you go out with customers and catch this and that and get a shot at other fish too, but it's different when someone actually converts an opportunity into a caught fish. Was it that kind of thing happening, or were there just tons of shots and an amazing day?

Jared Raskob: It really started off like an epic little tarpon morning — I think Greg caught the first six or so that he hooked, all between ten and twenty pounds, but our idea was to catch a super slam. I remember telling him as we were doing it, we're getting sucked in — I'm one of those guys who likes the variety of what the Keys offers, and I like to challenge ourselves to catch as many of the main five species as we can on a daily guiding basis, so that was our goal. I remember saying, hey man, we've gotta go, and — Greg, correct me if I'm wrong — I think we didn't catch another species until eleven o'clock.

Greg Dini: Yeah.

Jared Raskob: And then we came around the corner and I said there should be tailing reds right here, and we're going to catch snook right here too, try to bang out both. And sure enough, there was a pair of tailing reds — the only shot we saw when we approached — and Greg caught one, then we turned back around and caught some snook on the branch. Then, before we could even get the camera crew set up, Greg was already hooked up to a bonefish on fly, and we knocked that one out too. From there we made a nice eighteen-mile run up north — start to finish I think we probably covered ninety miles. We went up and Greg spotted a permit floating about two hundred feet off the bank, made the grab about three feet in front of it, the fish came over, and I watched it descend and knew it was only going down on one thing. We caught it, and it was kind of like, wow — did we not only just do that, even though it was a fun day, but we did what we came out to do, and we did it on film.

Tom Rowland: Man, that's impressive. It's hard to do — even if that was a tournament day it would be hard, and it's hard any time somebody just says, okay, go, that's what you're gonna do. Every time we bring the cameras out it doesn't usually result in the best weather, the best luck, or the most streamlined operation — it usually looks more like stuff falling, hatches slamming, people falling in the water, everything that would keep you from catching a fish, and you're dragging a camera boat the whole time. That's pretty impressive, man — one of the best days on film I've ever seen, and you could tell throughout the day it was the same day, the same light — it's obviously the same day, not something that took a week to film. It's impressive to do that once, and really impressive to do it on film when that was your goal.

Jared Raskob: Yeah, no, it was a super cool shoot.

Greg Dini: I wouldn't have rather done it with anybody else.

Tom Rowland: Alright, so how are you gonna top that?

Chasing Something New

Jared Raskob: Well, I've got some ideas in my head — and Greg's gonna be surprised because I haven't even talked this through with him — but I like to do the weird things, like a slam of a big trout on the flat, a sheepshead on the flat, a black drum tailing on the flat. Those are things people look past and go, oh, it's just a sheepshead — but in my mind, a sheepshead is harder to catch than almost anything else on that flat. Some people are just stuck on, oh, it's a redfish — but you can catch a big jack in the back of the school that fights better than the redfish. For me, I like the variety, so I'd love to do a Cajun Keys slam — a triple tail, a trout, a black drum, and a sheepshead all on the same day — and switch it up to show people there are cooler species all around us, and you just take what you get on a given day.

Tom Rowland: Nice. So are you guys planning on going to Greg's neck of the woods?

Greg Dini: Yep, yes we are. That's definitely the plan.

Bringing Jared to Louisiana

Tom Rowland: Man, there's some amazing fishing up there too. Greg, if you were thinking about the things you'd want to do this year — the kind of fishing that means a lot to you, a special kind of fishing you'd want to share with Jared and with the world — what comes to mind?

Greg Dini: Yeah, Jared and I have actually had the opportunity to fun-fish as friends in Louisiana before, and I'd love to be able to tell the story of how special this fishery is — and not so much just the fishing, but the culture. What goes on behind the scenes, the food, the flair, the music, the people you get to hang out with — it's just a totally different atmosphere than any other place you can go. So being able to tell that story, take Jared downtown, get him a couple of hurricanes and hand grenades, that kind of thing, after a fun day of fishing, would be great. And Jared and I have talked about this before — he may not care too much about catching a big redfish on fly, but I know one thing he wants to do is sight-fish a big one with a dead chunk of crab. So I'm going to take him out, put him in some beautiful water with big fish floating around him, and let's see if he can sight-fish one with a big live or dead blue crab. I think that'd be fun to watch.

Tom Rowland: Sounds pretty good. What about the offshore stuff — do you do any offshore, Greg?

Greg Dini: I do. I've done it before with some friends — mostly I've been in the skiff doing some nearshore stuff, rig fishing, snapper, cobia, amberjack. But we have a pretty good conventional tarpon fishery in Louisiana during certain times of the year, so we've got a lot of options, late summer, early fall. I'd love to get Jared over here and get him out to do some of that as well.

Louisiana Tarpon and the Coon Pop

Tom Rowland: Well, in that conventional tarpon fishing, is anybody fly fishing for them up there, or is there an area where you can do that?

Greg Dini: You can get them on fly, and there are definitely some areas that are more consistent for it, but our fishery is different than, say, the Keys, the Panhandle, or Boca Grande, where the fish are swimming through and stay on a consistent line. Our fish around here are constantly moving with the bait, so you might find them in one spot one day, free-jumping in the bait, and the next day the bait's gone and the fish leave. So it's hard to get a good pattern on them, but there are areas where they show up more consistently, and some people are catching them on fly.

Tom Rowland: They fish with that — what is it, a Coon Pop? Is that what they call it?

Greg Dini: Yeah, they fish it, but if you get them in the right situation in shallow enough water you can actually throw plugs at them — subsurface plugs and stuff. Most of the guys trolling Coon Pops are marking fish in twenty-five to forty feet of water and trolling them through. But you can get the fish in ten or eleven feet in some areas, and that's when you can throw a plug or get them on fly. It's just not as consistent as some other areas.

Tom Rowland: That's cool. I remember the first time I ever saw one of those Coon Pops, I was like, what is that? They said that's what all the guys up there target with. How does that thing work — is it all trolling? You don't throw those things at all? I've never fished with one.

Greg Dini: Nah, I mean, I guess you could throw it, but from what I understand there are two versions of the Coon Pop. The original is, I want to say, like a two-ounce gold spoon trolled with a curly tail off the back, but some people's version of it is basically what they used to fish in Boca Grande Pass — a curly tail on a heavy weight with a circle hook. Most of them are just trolling it along rip lines or edges where these fish hang out, and some days those guys go out and put up twenty fish — just a matter of whether the fish are there or not.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, when you hear somebody's putting up twenty fish, it's kind of like, I wonder if a Coon Pop would work in Key West Harbor. That's the first thing I think — let me see that thing again. Because that's all it takes, you get something from up there and take it down to Key West Harbor, they've never seen one of those things before. Man, it'd probably be great. Or the bridge or something — I don't know, seems like it would be. If they eat it in one place, they'd have to eat it in the other.

The Future of Waypoint and Digital Distribution

Tom Rowland: What are you guys' plans on distribution? You mentioned you're going to get Silver Kings out to a really big audience — are you going to change anything, do something new there?

Greg Dini: Right, I'll take it. Just in general, Jared, production, all of us — we've done quite a bit of research on where TV is going versus digital, and the numbers don't lie. TV numbers are down quite a bit over the last three to five years, and a lot of things are going more digital. So we're going to take a big bite out of what Waypoint can offer, and come in heavy with some of the new things Waypoint offers. It's just that numbers speak for themselves — from a sponsorship standpoint, it's much easier for sponsors to track those numbers on digital platforms than on TV. And with some of the things we've heard about where Waypoint is going — I'm not sure if the deal with Samsung is public yet or not, but with the Waypoint app being on all new Samsung smart TVs, tablets, and smartphones, it's going to be a huge audience that Waypoint can reach, and that's why we want to come in heavy with Silver Kings on Waypoint for season seven. So we're excited.

Tom Rowland: That's awesome, I'm really happy to hear it, because we go heavy there too and it's been great for us — honestly a lifesaver, because the conventional television model is tough, man. It's a weird thing — it doesn't happen in other industries — the number of people watching keeps going down while the price keeps going up. That doesn't seem sustainable anywhere. That was a big eye-opener for us, and with Waypoint we've been doing great, but it'll be even better because Silver Kings and our show and a lot of other shows on Waypoint are similar content, and it's always been my opinion that when you put similar shows together and create a block where somebody can sit down for a couple hours and watch similar content, everybody does better. That's how it used to be on ESPN — you'd have Saltwater Sunday, Walker's Cay Chronicles and Spanish Fly, our little show, George Poveromo, a bunch of saltwater shows — and they built a big audience around that block. That's happening at Waypoint too, and I'm glad to hear you guys are doing that. That's awesome.

Greg Dini: Absolutely, we're excited.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. And what about the production — is everything staying the same there?

Keeping the Production Team

Jared Raskob: Yeah, the production side is still with Marty and James. I'm going to be the host — Marty and James are just, they make the show. You put it in their hands and don't question anything, let them go do what they do. And as long as I can keep doing what I've been doing, getting the shots or the fishing they want, I think we'll still be at the same level we've been at.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, they're great. Those guys have always been top notch — I've known both of them a long time, fantastic. Good choice of talent for you. What about anything else — with Silver Kings, do you guys feel any sort of responsibility, since you have a good audience and a good following and a show filmed in beautiful places, to bring in the conservation aspect? And if so, what are your plans, and what do you see as the biggest issues right now?

Conservation and BTT

Jared Raskob: We've worked with BTT the last two years as our conservation partner, and it's been phenomenal. I've had the pleasure of fishing with people involved with BTT, including the founder, and I fish a lot with people who sit on the board — I've been around them for the last seven or eight years, and I really love what they've been doing. My passion has always been that, hopefully moving forward, with the new science — they've figured out spawning in tanks now — and kept pushing that and getting it out to as many people as we can when it comes to handling fish. That's the main thing — handling those species is so important. Everybody wants that glory shot when they catch a permit or a bonefish, especially their first one, but mishandling them is the problem — putting your fingers in the wrong spot, or putting too many hands on top of a bonefish and taking the slime coating off. Those are the kinds of things BTT has covered in their segments the last two years, just putting it out there so people start being more cautious when they catch fish.

Greg Dini: I think, to add to that, BTT has been known, I'd say since their start, as more of a fly-fishing-oriented conservation organization, and there are a lot of people in the conventional world who may not know about Bonefish Tarpon Trust because they've gravitated more toward the fly angler. That's a vision I think we have moving forward with the show — incorporating a bit more conventional fishing to reach that broader audience, and bring light to the fact that it's not just a fly-fishing thing — bonefish, tarpon, and permit should be available to all types of anglers. Conventional, fly, bait, whatever you're fishing with, you should get involved with an organization like BTT or Captains for Clean Water, something that helps preserve what we still have. It's been on a decline for years, and with the work of Bonefish Tarpon Trust and Captains for Clean Water, I'm sure Jared can speak to it, but I'm sure he's seen positives — the bonefish numbers increasing, and even the water clarity improving in the Everglades, at least from what I've seen fishing out there. The people who get involved and the money raised through these organizations — it works. And I think it's better to have more people know about it, not just fly anglers but conventional-minded people too.

Tom Rowland: It's interesting. Jared, what do you think is going on with the Islamorada bonefish fishery right now? We had the big fish there, and then it kind of disappeared, and now people are starting to catch more. What do you think — where is it right now in your mind?

The State of the Islamorada Bonefish Fishery

Jared Raskob: Bonefishing in general has definitely gotten a lot better over the last four years. There's something — and you know this too since you've spent a lot of time there — some food source in that downtown location that made those fish grow to a large size. There were always big fish caught up in Biscayne Bay too, which I think is now the last place for big fish, especially the further east part of the bay from Sands Cut up. There are still some big fish around that zip code, and you see them at different times in different spots on both sides of the bay. But I don't know if these fish that have come back the last four years are going to get that same size — I mean ten pounds plus. I spend a lot of time bonefishing and still love it, but I haven't caught a true double-digit fish in two years. There are a lot of people on social media saying, oh, ten-pounder, but in my mind that's probably a more realistic eight — a ten-pound fish is a big fish. But I feel really positive about our bonefishery. On certain days when everything's aligned, it's not uncommon now for a good angler in good conditions to catch twelve, thirteen, fourteen bonefish on fly in a day. Back when I was catching big fish, and you were too, you never caught more than two or three bonefish unless you went into the back region of Islamorada, where you could catch numbers — if you stayed around downtown Islamorada you were catching two or three that were seven, eight, up to fifteen pounds. Now when I spend days there, I'm seeing a high number of schools — big schools of smaller fish, anywhere from two to five pounds, and you can tell it's not the same school working one particular area — there are numerous schools. So I do believe the fishery is coming back, especially in the Lower Keys, and I know you spent —

Tom Rowland: Yeah, that's what I was going to ask you — what you thought was going on in Key West. When I first started guiding there, there were very few bonefish — you had to go up to Sugarloaf or the Big Pine area to catch many, and nobody was really catching them. There were a couple of little schools you could find if you had exactly the right tide and everything was perfect, but there just weren't that many and no one was catching them. I thought, well, when the Islamorada guys come down during the slam tournament they'll show us how to catch them — but they wouldn't catch them either. They just weren't there. Now I look back and think, they weren't there — we were looking in all the right places, they just weren't there, and now they are. There are a lot of them, and I always wonder what happened to bring so many in. It's a great thing to see, and a horrible thing to see the big ones decline in Islamorada, but I always wonder what happened, and sometimes it's the eyes on the ground that make the most sense to me.

Key West's Bonefish Turnaround

Jared Raskob: In the Lower Keys, the Gulf and the grass flats are so close together, whereas up in Islamorada it's more of an arm where you don't get as much flow — which always made me realize that flow was the food source for the big ones there. On an average tide with average wind you'd push the pole in the mud and watch it slowly drift with the current, but when you go into the Lower Keys and push it, you don't see the mud pop the same way, so it was always easier to find bonefish in Islamorada because when they were mudding they'd hold and drag the mud longer, letting you spot the mud before you spotted the fish. But after fishing with all these guys who are super involved with BTT, I do believe the banning of netting in Cuba and other locations, whenever it's been, maybe seven years, has really let fish bounce back and move through when they're spawning, flowing into the lower region of the Keys. Even in the summertime it used to be hard to find bonefish in Key West — now those guys are catching them in the wintertime, like in Key Largo. The Lower Keys guides are just phenomenal — you never see them come up our way, you only ever see the Upper Keys guides go down after fish, because from July on I spend July to October down in the Lower Keys, and it's changed for me — I love it, the fishing is phenomenal, baby tarpon, permit, everything around it. But you'd think, okay, maybe in the winter months these guys will come up here to switch it up and go redfish and snook fishing — but why would they leave their backyard when they're catching six or seven bonefish on fly with big schools, and when the weather's calm, they're catching permit too.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, you're exactly right about what's going on in the Lower Keys. Those guys are catching a lot of bonefish — a lot of them, and it's good to see. It really is. But it wasn't always that way, and then you see other things, like there used to be mutton snappers tailing on the flats, a little before my time, and that all of a sudden came to a close — boom, done. People say, oh yeah, we used to do that. When? Like two years ago. And then what happened? You'd think you'd see a few less, but then all of a sudden there were none, and that's a weird thing. I never got an answer about that.

The Mystery of the Vanishing Big Bonefish

Jared Raskob: That's the one thing about big bonefish in Islamorada. I remember I got the tail end of it — I always talk to the legends, and I love going back with them. One guy says you should have been here in the seventies, the next one says you should have been here in the late nineties. I started big bonefishing around 2005, and I remember talking with Tim Mahaffey and a couple of other true friends about it — that ocean side of Whale Harbor, Snake Creek, it was like overnight. One day I was fishing them, and I came back the next week and there wasn't one to be found. That breaks my heart.

Tom Rowland: How soon after a cold front are you talking about? Can you pinpoint those fish disappearing on a particular day, and is that associated with a cold front?

Jared Raskob: No, it was 2013 when I remember it happening. There were still big fish around Shell Key, Lignumvitae, and some around Lake Nuvette. But it was overnight — it didn't matter, from the north side of Snake Creek to the south side of Whale Harbor, it didn't matter the tide, it just mattered which flat you were fishing, and then all of a sudden they just weren't there. Every few months I still pull up just to bring back older times and hope to see a mud, but usually it turns out to be a bonnethead or a stingray. But you know what's funny? Now I see permit there more than I ever have.

Tom Rowland: That's super interesting. I always wondered — as soon as the big bonefish moved out, all of a sudden there were redfish in those same spots doing a similar thing, rooting down the banks, like there was food there and the bonefish weren't, so the redfish moved in and took over. I wonder if that's what's going on with the permit, or if it's just — I don't know, it's a weird thing. I don't mean to harp on how good it used to be, because that's not what I'm doing at all — I just find it interesting that there's this ebb and flow in the fishery. Maybe these are the heyday for Key West bonefishing, but it wasn't always that way — it used to be really hard to catch any down there, and now it's really good. There's this ebb and flow, and it's interesting to compare notes with other people who've seen the same thing.

Jared Raskob: Well, I still believe the fishery — going back to what Greg was talking about with Captains for Clean Water and our water — in 2015, if you went out and got six redfish shots, you were doing something great. The water was hard to see, you had to find clean water, there weren't many fish around. But now, going out and park fishing for reds and snook, it's the best I've ever seen — and not just in one location, from Sandy all the way back in the bights, between every island. I've talked to a lot of guides who fish a lot of different zip codes, and they all feel the same way.

Redfish, Snook, and a Recovering Everglades

Jared Raskob: All those small snook — nowadays if you only catch twenty snook it's considered a slow day — all these fish we see moving around are going to turn into seven, eight, ten-pounders five years from now.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, I hope so, I think it will happen. I have very positive feelings about the fishery right now. Greg, what about your area? One of the things I noticed so much when I was fishing up there — mostly around Venice — was that every time I went, it would be a little different, this kind of erosion of the coastline going on, and I didn't know if that was a good thing, a bad thing, or just natural. What are the things going on in your area that you might bring light to in this new season of Silver Kings?

Louisiana's Coastal Erosion Crisis

Greg Dini: Yeah, I'll tell you what — you touched on erosion, and it's not a good thing, we're losing way too much marsh way too quickly. I want to say the numbers are something like we're losing a football field every ten seconds of coastline in Louisiana, which is insane. There have been some organizations starting to plant quite a bit of black mangrove out on some of the shorelines, doing coastal restoration. We've got a chain of barrier islands from just south of Mississippi all the way down to the mouth of the river, the Chandeleurs, and with a lot of the storms those islands have gotten washed away or burned — those bare islands act as a barrier for our marsh, so they've been doing restoration work with those islands to help keep the erosion down. They've also been doing work with a lot of the dredged pipeline channels that create more current through the marsh in areas that don't help the erosion, they just make it go faster, so they're trying to block some of those channels off. But we're losing way too much, too quickly. They're doing some diversion work, trying to let the natural sediment of the river come out to gain more marsh, but we're just not gaining it as fast as we're losing it. It's scary to think where it's going to be in ten years, but they're doing as much as they can to keep it while we have it.

Tom Rowland: And when you say they, what organizations are working on that?

Greg Dini: The Army Corps of Engineers is doing some of it, working with the government to figure out where to put these diversions so we can gain as much marsh as possible. We've also got the Louisiana Guides Foundation, which is trying to raise money to buy mangroves to plant in the marsh, because the mangrove root system is much stronger than the spartina grass we have on most of our shorelines. And to be honest, down in Venice, where you have Roseau cane — that's an invasive species — the root system isn't very good, and it gets wiped out by even a bad southeast wind. So we're doing as much as we can, but I wish more people would get involved, because it's probably the best fishery in the world, period, and I'd hate to see my kids not be able to experience even a fraction of what I've been able to experience since I've been here.

Tom Rowland: So you're saying they're planting black mangrove? That seems really far north — can it live there?

Greg Dini: It can. They've planted, I want to say, a couple hundred thousand black mangroves along the coast of Louisiana — I don't know the exact numbers, but one of the guys I work with, Lucas Biffett, started that project and has done a lot of work through Orvis, raising a lot of money to do as much as they can. There's actually a lot of natural black mangrove in areas further west, west of the Mississippi, where they grow naturally, so they're trying to plant them in areas that don't have as many and preserve what we have.

Tom Rowland: Well, I like it when — like with Captains for Clean Water and the issues we've had — I was always very optimistic because they pointed out there was a solution, and now, like Jared pointed out, Flamingo looks better than I can ever remember it. I agree with you a hundred percent, it's as beautiful as I've ever seen it, and the fishing is fantastic. A lot of that is right in line with what the plan was — it wasn't that Captains for Clean Water created the plan, the plan was already out there, it was just that nobody was doing what had been planned a long time ago. But I was always pretty optimistic there was a good solution, and I hope that's the way it goes for your area up there with the mangroves and stabilizing that shoreline, because I sure do love fishing up where you are — it's just an amazing place.

The Pogy Boat Problem

Greg Dini: It's really cool. One other thing we're having some pretty big issues with right now, and I think there's some headway being made, is with the pogy boats up here. They're basically going up in airplanes and spotting these giant pogy schools during the peak spawning time for our bull redfish. They're allowed so much bycatch in the pogies they bring in, and that bycatch is mostly mature, bull, spawning-size redfish. I hate to see it every year — come September, you'll run some of the beaches west of Venice and see nothing but dead bull redfish littering the beaches, all from overconsumption by these pogy boats coming in too shallow. They're putting a hurt on our bull redfish population, and you hope in the future it doesn't hit the spawning-size fish that help produce our redfish population. It's not good.

Tom Rowland: Wow. Well, I hope you can bring light to some of those issues and make a difference. But man, I'm happy for you guys — I think you're both awesome dudes, and definitely keeping family first, and I'm really happy to see you getting Silver Kings going, or re-going, and partnering up. It looks like it's going to be a great project for both of you, and I look forward to seeing it on Waypoint. You got anything you want to leave us with?

Wrapping Up

Jared Raskob: No, I just want to thank you, Tom, for having us and inviting us on this. It's awesome — I love listening to your guys' podcast, and I've been watching your shows for a long time, so I'm humbled by it. Thank you.

Tom Rowland: Oh, man, thanks for doing it. I really appreciate it.

Greg Dini: Absolutely, I second that. We're excited about where the show is going, and I'd say at some point we may have to get you on there and put you in front of our camera.

Tom Rowland: Say the word, man.

Greg Dini: Can do.

Tom Rowland: Say the word, I'd be honored. I just hope Jared wouldn't make me nervous — he'd be like, there's one, there's one, there's one, why aren't you casting? I don't know, I'm a little nervous, I'm used to being on the back of the boat. No, I'd love it, man, that'd be awesome. I certainly know — I know more about Jared than he knows I know about him, because he's inherited some of my very best customers and some of my best friends, and they tell me all kinds of stories. So, they're all good — they're all good.

Jared Raskob: Oh, there'll be some that aren't so good.

Tom Rowland: I'm sure — everybody's got something that aren't so good. But I don't know, man, you guys are doing awesome, and I really look forward to seeing more super grand slams. I want to see you top that — that's what I want to see. The bar's high. Bar's high.

Greg Dini: Do it. We're gonna do it.

Tom Rowland: Alright, fellas, I'm gonna let you go. I appreciate it. Let's do this again, and I'll see you guys soon.

Jared Raskob: Thank you, Tom.

Greg Dini: Absolutely, Tom. Appreciate it. Thank you.

Tom Rowland: See you.