Full transcript of the Tom Rowland Podcast, Episode 861: Viral Sensation Uncle Larry Outdoors — Sharing the Love of Fishing with a New Generation, with Uncle Larry.

A Windy Day and a Giant Catch

Johnny: Windier today. Oh, yeah — it's not a worm bite, it's a giant.

Tom Rowland: It's a giant.

Kai: I'm a giant.

Tom Rowland: What's going on, everybody? We've got a great podcast for you today with some young guys from Uncle Larry Outdoors. They're on — it's Eric, Johnny, and Kai. Here we go.

Johnny: They need to go out and have fun. They need to hop a fence when they're twelve years old, catch a six-pounder, and giggle running away from a tractor. Those memories are what drive you to be the person in fifteen years who has that five-thousand-dollar Goliath grouper setup and moves down to the Keys.

Kai: My name is Kai.

Eric: Johnny.

Eric: And Eric.

Johnny: We're Uncle Larry Outdoors.

Tom Rowland: What's going on, Uncle Larry Outdoors? What's going on, fellas?

Johnny: Thanks for having us, Tom. Appreciate it, man.

Tom Rowland: Absolutely. What are you guys up to today? Is the wind blowing for you?

Kai: Yeah, it's a little chilly out there today. It was like forty, forty-five degrees this morning.

Tom Rowland: Forty-five. So what does that cold snap do for your fishing? Are you looking forward to anything when it gets cold, or does it shut you down?

Kai: We kind of like the winter, honestly. It's pretty much our favorite time of year to fish, just because of the way that we fish — we do a lot of kayaking and backwater stuff, so we tend to excel when those temps get a little cooler and the fish push up into the rivers and backwaters. It's a little easier to manage than all of Tampa Bay.

Tom Rowland: For sure. So, Uncle Larry — Uncle Larry isn't just one person. It's a whole bunch of people.

The Real Story Behind the Uncle Larry Name

Johnny: Yeah, we came up with the name. It was more of a metaphorical idea, because I had an uncle Larry — a real person, and I actually only fished with him one time. It was back when I was first really getting into fishing. I was living up in New Jersey and Long Island and was a baseball player at the time, so I was always busy in the spring and summer, the prime fishing times. But one summer I had a little two-week break, and it was the first summer I had access to a boat in Long Island — an eighties Pursuit, like a 21-footer. I was going out for fluke every day, and it was my first experience getting on a consistent bite, a pattern, going through the whole seasonal process of targeting fish.

I had this uncle Larry, and he was a big fisherman, but he had really bad arthritis at that point in his life, so his hands looked like boxing gloves. I just knew he loved fishing, and my mom asked if I wanted to take him out one day. I said yes, but I'd been planning this big send in the old boat — we're going offshore, it's going to be badass. When it came down to the day to fish, it was more like, “Uncle Larry's probably not going to handle this — just take him snapper fishing off the dock.” And twelve, thirteen-year-old me was being a little arrogant about it. I wanted to go send it, get out in the ocean and the breakers. So I was kind of pissy about it.

But we went out on the dock and just threw little dead shiners, and we got on a bite — call it fifteen, twenty snapper blues. I remember how happy this dude was, cranking on those fish and laughing his ass off. I hadn't seen him that happy ever, and I realized he hadn't even caught a fish in like fifteen years. Long story short, that really changed my perspective on why we do this — how much fun there is in it, and that it's not necessarily about the size of the fish or where you are, but the overall experience.

When he passed away, I went to his house and his wife let me take all his old fishing stuff, which hadn't been touched in twenty years. There wasn't much useful, but there was one ultralight rod — a two-piece ultralight with spinning guides but a fly-fishing reel seat. We still haven't figured out exactly what rod it was. I got it refurbished and used that noodle ultralight almost exclusively from around 2017, 2018 up until last summer, when it finally met its demise. That was the whole concept behind Uncle Larry Outdoors: everyone has an “uncle Larry” who either introduces you to the sport or reminds you why it's so much fun and why the connections you make out there matter. We took that metaphor and put it into practice by almost exclusively fishing with that one rod, until it finally met its demise in Sweden after some pike fishing.

We still take that concept seriously and try to introduce as many people as we can to fishing. We're also minimalists with gear — we come from New Jersey, and not many people where we grew up were doing this. We had one rod that worked for whatever we were doing, riding our bikes around, doing the whole trespassing-to-go-fishing scene, and once we got our licenses it was pretty much game over, but we still only had limited gear. That idea — one rod, get out there, do it for the right reasons — has been our bread and butter.

Tom Rowland: Man, that's a cool story. Uncle Larry would be pretty happy to know you put that rod to such good use. How many species do you think you caught on that thing?

Johnny: Oh, man. Some highlights — up north you've got largemouth, smallmouth, pretty much every trout species: browns, rainbows, brookies. I took it out to Sweden and caught their version of brown trout, plus pike, pickerel, and perch. Then down in Florida, when we moved down here, I caught tarpon on it, jacks, sea trout, reds — pretty much anything we encountered on a day-to-day basis, at least up to that point in our lives, we caught something on it.

Tom Rowland: What did you do with the reel seat? Did you leave it as a fly reel seat?

Johnny: I left the original reel seat, and for a while it had the original everything, but it was hand-tied with old, rusted metallic guides. Eventually, once I had braided mainline on there, it started snapping as I reeled in, so I got new ceramic guides put on and polished out the two-piece — I didn't even realize it was a two-piece rod at first because it was so old I couldn't pull it apart. Once that was polished up I started traveling with it a lot more, and it never broke on a fish — I caught tarpon, pike, everything on it. What finally broke it was on my birthday in Sweden last year: I'd just caught a decent 24, 25-inch pike on it, and then it met its demise in a car window.

Tom Rowland: Oh no — it met its demise in a car window? You just ruined the whole story, man. All those great fish, and it dies in a car window.

Johnny: It's better than a ceiling fan, I guess. It caught jacks and little grouper and everything, and then a car window got it.

Tom Rowland: That would be even less honorable for a rod like that. So were you putting a spinning reel on that fly reel seat? Did you ever try fly fishing with it?

Johnny: The pairing was a one-thousand-size Stradic, ten-pound braid, and whatever leader we were using.

Tom Rowland: When I grew up in Tennessee, people used to do almost the opposite — they'd use a fly rod but put a spinning reel on it, kind of like European nymphing but with bait. They'd take a live minnow, put it on a fly rod with a spinning reel, and just high-stick it down through the little creeks. I'm trying to think of why somebody would make a rod like that — a spinning rod with a fly reel.

Johnny: It almost seems like a fad or a gimmick, because we haven't found any information on what reel it actually is. I could see it being one of those sixties or seventies Bass Pro house-brand reels.

Tom Rowland: A mooching reel — do you know what that is? They use them in Alaska, and you can throw a bait rig with one incredibly far. I don't know if they call it a mooching reel up there, but it's a fly-reel-type reel on a long rod that you spool with mono, and up there they called it a center pin. So there's a mooching reel and a center pin — the center pin is more like a fly rod setup, and with it you can throw basically a bobber with an egg pattern underneath it all the way across a river. Because if you try to fly fish that, you get drag in the line and have to mend it constantly, but with the mono or braid on a center pin you get almost no pull and incredible drifts. The guys who know how to do that are deadly.

Johnny: It was only five and a half feet — how long were those rods usually?

Tom Rowland: Longer, up in Alaska.

The Hot Seat

Tom Rowland: One thing we do here on the podcast is the Hot Seat, so we're going to go through some quick-fire questions I prepared for you guys today. Fresh or salt?

Kai: Salt.

Tom Rowland: Drive or fly, Johnny?

Johnny: Drive.

Tom Rowland: Chocolate or vanilla, Eric?

Eric: Vanilla.

Tom Rowland: Text or call, Kai?

Kai: Text.

Tom Rowland: Favorite social media platform, Johnny?

Johnny: YouTube.

Tom Rowland: Do you answer every comment, or never look at them, Eric?

Eric: Every comment.

Tom Rowland: One million now, or ten million later, Kai?

Kai: Ten million later.

Tom Rowland: Good for you. One thing you've learned in the last year that's made you money, Johnny?

Johnny: I'd say, deliver on what you say you're going to do.

Tom Rowland: Good one. A movie that makes you laugh?

Eric: “I now pronounce you Chuck and Larry.”

Tom Rowland: Kai, would you have a reptile as a pet?

Kai: Wouldn't have one. Actually — yes.

Tom Rowland: Johnny, a non-fishing destination you'd like to visit?

Johnny: Every destination's a fishing destination.

Tom Rowland: Fair enough. Eric, what's the top fishing destination on your bucket list?

Eric: Bhutan.

Tom Rowland: What do you want to catch there?

Eric: The golden mahseer.

Tom Rowland: Yep, I happen to know a little bit about that — never been, but that's on my list too. One species you'd like to catch, Kai?

Kai: Goonch catfish.

Tom Rowland: That's a good one too. Where would you do that?

Kai: India — I forget exactly where, somewhere near the Himalayas.

Tom Rowland: I think you might be able to get a mahseer in that same body of water too, according to Jeremy Wade. One thing you've changed your mind on in the last two years, Johnny?

Johnny: When you're right about something, you don't need to convince other people — you can just keep it to yourself.

Tom Rowland: We'll get into that a little bit later. One piece of advice you live by, Eric?

Eric: Do what you say you're going to do.

Deliver on What You Say You'll Do

Tom Rowland: A couple of things you guys were talking about — do what you say you're going to do, deliver on what you say you're going to deliver — those are two themes that came through in this. Where does that come from? What are you learning? I'm assuming Uncle Larry is selling to sponsors, that you're doing this as a business.

Johnny: Yeah. That's kind of where it comes from — simplifying the mindset and executing on what we say we want to accomplish. I think this started as this kind of ethereal concept. I was working in Manhattan in financial consulting and tech sales at the time, and really this was just a way for me to connect with cool people I wasn't meeting in that day-to-day scene, on a deeper, fishing level, because I knew they existed from earlier in my life. But it started with no foundation — it wasn't a brand or something we were trying to sell. As it got a little bigger, we started meeting cooler people, having bigger goals and aspirations, and doing more exciting things. But when you're dreaming that big, you can get a kind of paralysis by analysis. Over the last year or two, with some of the relationships we've made, we've really tried to focus on what we're good at as individuals and how we can deliver value for someone else that lets us keep pursuing our ultimate dreams — that Jeremy Wade lifestyle, doing it our way. If we want to go to Bhutan tomorrow and catch a golden mahseer, what relationships can we call on, and what can we do to help somebody else out in the process? That's been the biggest mindset shift for us: still have the big goals and aspirations, but don't skip steps in getting there. If someone handed us funding to do a ten-part series in Bhutan tomorrow, none of us would really know what to do with it. So we're trying to learn along the way and check off the bucket-list items closer to home, and figure out what people find valuable in what we do.

Tom Rowland: That's super cool. When I started this podcast — I've done almost 900 episodes now, 850 or so — one of the things I was most interested in was that moment when people, especially fishing guides and charter captains who'd gotten into the outdoors, decided, “I'm doing this.” There have been some of the best stories on the show about that moment when someone decided they weren't going to keep doing whatever they were doing in Manhattan anymore, that there was a future in this. I'd love to hear it from all of you — what were you doing before you started this, and are you all doing it full-time now?

From Manhattan and the Jersey Shore to Uncle Larry Outdoors

Eric: From a personal standpoint, I've been fishing my whole life and filming my fishing adventures since 2010, when I was thirteen years old. I carried that through high school knowing I enjoyed filming, but the fishing always came first — that's what mattered most to me. I've met all my closest friends and associates through fishing, and it brings me physical and mental peace and stability, so it's always been important to me. Over the years I molded that into a couple of different work opportunities, one of which was working with Mike Iaconelli — I did that for three years, and that was the main thing I was doing before Uncle Larry's really became a thing. Johnny actually started the page toward the end of my time there, when he was working in Manhattan, and it really formulated from there because I think we were both going through transitional periods in our lives where we looked at Uncle Larry's like, “Maybe we should focus on this,” because at the end of the day it's so pure, and it puts us around the kind of people we want to be associated with. We'd always had a lot of appreciation for it, and I think that's when it really began to blossom for the two of us.

Tom Rowland: Was the first money you ever made in fishing through working with Mike Iaconelli — was that your first hit?

Eric: Actually, before that, back in high school, I was associated with a website — an early bass-fishing forum, back when forums were a much bigger deal — called The Bass College. It's not around today, but it was a real thing in the early 2010s, and that's where I got my first money to go produce videos. Later on, being around Mike was very important, because here's a guy from the same state as me who I grew up watching and admiring, and now I was physically around him and could see that he'd built a successful career off of what I loved to do, just in a different way than we were going about it. Being around someone like that and getting that perspective was huge for me.

Tom Rowland: And what about how you two ended up with Johnny?

Eric: I've known Johnny since we were six years old. We grew up together in a fairly large school system in New Jersey, and he was one of the only two people I knew who fished — him and our mutual friend Jack. So the fact that we both liked to fish and knew each other from that early age was kind of set in stone. Later on, when I was working for Mike and Johnny was in Manhattan, we never lost that connection through fishing. Johnny would literally get on the train, meet me at a train station in Jersey, I'd pick him up, we'd drive two hours north into upstate New York, fish all day in twenty-degree weather, and then Johnny would walk back down a Manhattan street at one in the morning, soaked, in waders, with a rod.

Tom Rowland: Nobody bothers you when you're soaking wet in waders walking down the street in Manhattan.

Johnny: That's the one nice thing about Manhattan — you're hidden in plain sight. That would be crazy in almost any other city, but there it's like, well, at least you're not wielding a weapon, so people just let it go.

Tom Rowland: They probably think you've been down in the sewer and just decide to stay away from you.

Kai: Like sewer rats.

Tom Rowland: So Mike Iaconelli — I always loved his show about urban bass fishing, City Limits. It was on the same network, I think it was NBC Sports, or maybe Versus back in the day. Did you ever go city fishing with him when you worked for him?

Eric: Yeah, actually we got on the news because we went into downtown Philadelphia and caught a catfish out of a storm drain in the middle of the city, and a news crew showed up and everything. We grew up watching City Limits — it was a major influence on our childhood, especially considering that Ike really stood for the idea that you don't need to be from Georgia, in khaki pants and a plaid shirt. You could be a little loud, have tattoos, be from Philly, and still be part of this. When we were young, that was really important for us to see. So to develop a friendship with him later on and go on some of the adventures we've had has been nothing short of amazing.

Tom Rowland: That's awesome. And it's not just that story — the way he did it, going through the federation and winning the Bassmaster Classic, would be enough on its own to have iconic status. You've got the tattoos, you're from Jersey, you're a little loud, and when he broke onto the scene he was a totally different character than what was out there. But he did it, and he's such a hero to so many people because of the way he did it — going through the federation, getting that one spot, and then not just qualifying for the Classic but winning it, and then going on to prove it wasn't a fluke, that he could compete and win and be one of the top guys from then on. He's been on the podcast twice. The first time, we met at ICAST, and I just walked up and said, “Hey Mike, I'm Tom Rowland, I was wondering if you wanted to be on the podcast.” He said, “Yeah, man, I'm a big fan of the podcast — when do you want to do it?” I was floored that he'd listened to it. He came right up to the suite, sat down, and told his whole story like he'd never told it before — he was emotional about it. I have a tremendous amount of respect for him, and the work he's done with his foundation, getting so many kids into the sport, is an inspiration. That's what speaks to me about what you guys are trying to do too — doing this all pure. So tell me, what do you want people to know about where Uncle Larry Outdoors is now? What's your main platform — YouTube, Instagram, what?

Building the Uncle Larry Outdoors Platform

Eric: If you want to go purely off numbers, our biggest following is on Instagram, and it's been a good platform for us because we can put up raw content that people can scroll through and enjoy, but there's also a deeper, more artistic side to Uncle Larry's that aims to portray fishing the way we all actually see it — as something deep and meaningful. Instagram has let us produce stuff like that. YouTube is where our longer-form content lives — twenty, thirty-minute videos of entire days of fishing. Those are our two main platforms right now, but we're also on TikTok.

Tom Rowland: Does TikTok do well for you? Are you guys TikTokers?

Johnny: We're kind of in that millennial cutoff where we don't really understand it, so it's not easy.

Tom Rowland: How old are you guys?

Johnny: Twenty-seven.

Tom Rowland: Twenty-seven, twenty-eight — you kind of missed it a little bit. My oldest son is twenty-six, right around your age, and he missed it totally too. My middle son is twenty-five, and my daughter is twenty, so she's squarely in the TikTok generation. It's funny how just a few years can put you on one side or the other — you guys are probably not Facebook people at all, but I bet you remember when Facebook was the thing everyone wanted to be on. Then it's squarely the Instagram world for a certain age — not quite Facebook, but definitely YouTube and Instagram. It's funny how it all comes in waves. I got on Instagram early and we got a lot of followers right away — if you try to get on now, it's tough. Do you think you just missed the TikTok wave, or is it not that important?

Johnny: We had one video go so viral that millions of people on TikTok were reposting it, and we weren't even on TikTok — we had a handle, but we never used it. I think the lesson from that is that we make a lot of content, so we might as well throw darts at the board on TikTok too. On Instagram we have our consistency down — we know how we portray the page, what hashtags to use, how to respond to followers, because we were kind of bred into that platform. TikTok, we just post our content there for now and hope for some crossover from people who already know us from YouTube or Instagram. People are making their way over, but it's not something we've put as much time or effort into.

Tom Rowland: So have you guys figured out how to do this full-time?

Johnny: I'd say no, not yet. We do our best to bring in as much as we can and put it all back into fishing through Uncle Larry's, but there's still a lot of work to do on the side just to keep our needs met, and that's been a struggle at times because we have such a fire about fishing. We've taken on all sorts of jobs — corporate nine-to-fives while doing this, side hustles, selling the work we do for ourselves as a service to other small businesses and fishing brands. We're trying to tap into more of a gig-economy mindset, because the social media skills we've built are valuable whether it's for a house that's for sale, a new small business, or a restaurant — it's the same formula in terms of prepping the technology, the cameras, uploading, and giving advice on how to post. It's pretty much multimedia marketing, which we've kind of taught ourselves while building a fishing brand. So there's an element of sustaining and elevating ourselves outside the fishing world, because the fishing world can be a tough place to break into financially — it's such a pure activity that so many people are willing to do it at a huge discount, or for free. You really have to prove yourself over a long period and be unique enough that somebody finds value worth paying for. Honestly, if you can do that in fishing, you can probably make more money doing the same thing elsewhere, up to a point. Getting creative with that skill set and using fishing as a portfolio has been a good intermediary step for us. But the goal is to put a hundred percent of our focus, money, time, and attention on fishing — we're never looking to get away from that.

Tom Rowland: It sounds like there are a couple of things there — maybe you want to build a multimedia marketing business that provides enough money that you can fish all the time, or do you make your money from fishing itself? Have you thought about what a three- or five-year blue-sky plan would look like for Uncle Larry?

Johnny: I think the biggest blue-sky idea we've talked about is having a consistent, project-based portfolio, where if we pitch a project, however crazy it is, somebody knows it's going to reach the audience they're looking to capture — that it's worth the investment. Have we shown, over years, that we have an audience? We've been very stringent about being present with the people who follow us, always communicating, responding, helping out however we can, because that community is our foundation — that's why we do this in the first place, it started as a way to network and meet cool people, and now those cool people are really behind us. In terms of the bigger project world, we have lofty goals. I think it's because we grew up with Pokemon — Kai and I have talked about this a lot, this idea of “catching them all,” this sort of unaccomplishable goal you get as close to as you can. I think the idea of being able to pick a species and a destination and come back with proof that you did it is almost a metaphor for setting a goal and accomplishing it. So the blue-sky idea for us is to get to a point where we have the skill set to go anywhere in the world and catch whatever fish it is, and have an audience that supports that and gets excited behind it. We need a positive message behind what we're doing that encapsulates something bigger than fishing, and an audience consistent and targeted enough that a brand behind us gets real value from that viewership.

Tom Rowland: I think you found your idea just a minute ago talking about Pokemon — you should build an app. Like a scavenger hunt, but you have to catch a fish.

Johnny: We've actually talked about that.

Tom Rowland: You should do it. I mean, you could put together a minimum viable version that wouldn't cost you an arm and a leg, and you guys could probably figure out how to build something like that. Then you just test it with your audience and see if people are into it — you could run a scavenger hunt on Instagram over a weekend, have people tag their catches, see how many people participate, and maybe put some cash or prizes up. That seems like a good way to reach people your age and younger — like a dad and his kids doing a scavenger hunt together. With my own kids, we used to run fishing tournaments where you'd look at everything that had already been caught and find the open categories — we need four ladyfish, and they have to be on this pound test, so you're learning the knots and learning how to catch different fish. We need one horse-eye jack. Those fish weren't hard to catch, but it was about identification and learning where these fish are, what they eat — they learned more that way than they did in school, and they didn't even realize they were learning, because they were just interested in fishing. That was kind of our own little scavenger hunt.

Getting Youth Into Fishing

Tom Rowland: One thing on my list to talk to you guys about is that in the fishing industry, getting youth into fishing, or keeping their interest, is a real concern because of phones, video games, you name it — there are a lot of distractions pulling kids away. When I grew up, we were outside all the time — you'd get on your bike and not come home till after dark, usually with a fishing rod along for the ride. It sounds like you guys did a lot of the same kind of thing, but that's not the case for most kids these days, and you also have this urban-fishing background that I don't have. So what do you think is the most effective way to talk to younger people — your age or younger, especially teenagers — about fishing, and to encourage them to go do it? What's missing in the fishing industry that you guys are tapping into that other people should be tapping into?

Eric: I think it goes back to seeing the enthusiasm we have on camera when we're out there. That reel that went viral, with Kai catching that bass — I always think back to why that resonated with so many people, and it wasn't about a gimmick, it was that you could feel that energy through the screen and realize, “Whatever he's doing there, I want to do that,” whether it's in fishing or outside of it. I want people to feel how he felt when he caught that fish. Giving kids that opportunity to feel that feeling is huge — for example, when the page was still small and we were up in New York City, we ran an event where we raised enough money to buy rods and reels, brought them into the middle of Central Park, and just started handing them out to kids, asking who wanted to go fishing. We had corn, and we caught bluegills, and I was able to watch a kid feel that bite for the first time, pull the rod up, and see a bluegill on the other end. In that moment I knew that kid got the feeling — it's not something you can physically see, you just know. That kid might be hooked for life. I think making sure kids can tangibly feel what that's like is where it starts.

Tom Rowland: What's interesting is that kid might be hooked for life and fish all the time, or fish once every five years, but they'll be a fisherman at heart for the rest of their life. That's important, because there are people out there who genuinely don't think fishing is cool, believe it or not. The more allies we have out there saying, “What are you talking about — fishing's amazing, some of the best time I ever spent with my dad or my mom was fishing,” the better, even if you had one bad day where you got hooked in the finger. You can leave an impression on someone that makes them a fisherman for life, with real respect for the sport and for the people who do it ethically. What about you guys, Johnny and Kai — anything to add?

Johnny: Just real quick on what you were saying about fishing not being seen as cool, and where the industry might be missing right now — one thing we've all noticed since COVID is that when we were growing up in New Jersey, fishing was not cool. That's why we were some of the only ones doing it. Now I go back to my hometown and see eight or ten kids out on bikes fishing, kids with their own personal Instagram pages — fishing's suddenly getting cool. I've heard someone compare it to skateboard culture in the nineties, because it's shifted from this country-club bass-boat or tuna-boat lifestyle to more of “let's get back to the adventure being the point of it” — the fish is almost secondary. With the pandemic and everyone being cooped up, it became, “I'm going to set a small goal and catch a fish today,” and catching the fish is proof you had a great day, but you remember the day itself, how much you laughed, the new places you explored. The urban environment is really cool for that too, because you realize life finds a way even in Central Park — if you can do that there, you look at a map and realize you can do it here, or there, or somewhere else within driving distance that you had no idea was even there. So there's an element of fishing becoming cool and more kids getting into it, and, say what you want about a Googan Squad–type YouTube approach, but when people took that perspective and showcased the whole coffee-to-bedtime adventure, people empathized with it. Where I think the industry is missing the mark is trying to sell people who've never tried the sport twenty different thousand-dollar setups and telling them they need eight-pound fluorocarbon instead of ten-pound test — that's nonsense. When you're at the level of, say, a PGA Tour player using irons with a tiny sweet spot because that's what that level demands, sure, equipment matters. But you're trying to sell gear to a generation that's just getting started, telling them they need thousands of dollars of electronics on the front of the boat. No — they need to go out and have fun, hop a fence at twelve years old, catch a six-pounder, and laugh running away from a tractor. Those are the memories that are going to drive someone to be the person who, in fifteen years, has that five-thousand-dollar Goliath grouper setup and moves down to the Keys. If you want someone to get there, the barrier to entry can't be so high, and people who are doing more with less shouldn't be shamed for it. That's been a big thing for us — do more with what you have, and don't make it about the result as much as the people you meet, the places you see, the experiences you have, and the lessons you learn, because if you do all of that, the fishing will come, and the gear will find its way into your hands. Don't skip steps. We're fortunate now that if we want to go to the Keys, we know six people we can go hang out with, but when we first got to Florida we were literally sleeping on the streets of Miami, getting two hours in sleeping bags in a dirt lot, just to try and catch a tarpon. And those are the days we'll remember. So keeping it cool is also about it being fine to sell a product or an experience, as long as it's actually useful and doesn't discourage somebody from being part of a community that ultimately has nothing to do with gear.

Tom Rowland: That's good advice. I think the same thing can probably be said for the whole fishing industry, not just the angler — don't skip steps, don't just assume. I've been in the fishing industry for thirty-plus years now, and it's easy to start at what you think are the basics and miss the years before that, where literally you had no idea what you were doing. We focus in on the nuances of knots, which is great for a certain part of the audience, but there's a whole other part of the audience thinking, “Wait, there's more than one knot? Why would I even need that?” I think I need to be constantly reminded of that myself, in the way I phrase questions on the podcast or the way you're doing YouTube videos — a lot of what we fish for is the once-in-a-lifetime fish, a permit or a tarpon or a sailfish, and that takes a certain kind of gear. But there are a million other fish you could catch — pull up to any bridge and catch snappers, grunts, jack crevalle, and all kinds of stuff that pulls harder than most freshwater fish, and it's so much fun and so easy, but people forget to talk about that side of it. It's interesting that on YouTube, the videos that get the most views are usually of the most interesting fish, not necessarily the biggest — maybe a goliath grouper, because it looks like a dinosaur. That's how it was with my own kids — it was never about the biggest fish. I'd take them bonefishing and they'd say, “This sucks, we've only caught three today,” and I'd say, “Three's great, we're doing awesome,” and they'd say it was terrible, because the day before we'd caught hundreds of little snappers and they'd loved it. They remember the cool one, the weirdest one — an eel, a puffer fish — for the rest of the day. We used to take pictures of whoever caught the coolest or weirdest fish and put those up on the fridge, back when you got pictures developed. They were always more interested in the weirdest or rarest fish than in, “We caught another tarpon and it was one inch bigger than the last one.” Most people, especially kids, don't care about that — they want to go catch the barracuda with the huge teeth because it's cool. So, Uncle Larry, when we talked about your plan for the future — do you guys believe that's the way to go, or should you double down on fishing itself and figure out how to make a living purely through that? Are you all aligned on that?

Kai: I believe so. I think we definitely have to find, for the time being, some other ways to maintain ourselves, but the ultimate goal, like Johnny said, is to work up to a point where we have the financial backing to go wherever we want to go and do it properly, with the knowledge and the skill set and the capabilities to do it the right way.

Tom Rowland: That's a real challenging thing when you're starting out — figuring out how that actually pays. I think a lot of people miss it, and a few people hit it, but I don't know where you all are leaning on how that pays. Who would actually pay for a project to send you to Bhutan, for example?

Johnny: That's what we're working on figuring out — testing all of that.

Tom Rowland: That's the real challenge — creating a product that someone actually wants to pay for.

Johnny: Exactly. Everything we've done so far has been our own time and our own money, and lately we've done a lot of project work for other people, which is probably more the real answer to your question. The direction that's taken is: our own stuff is our own stuff — there's not as much reason for somebody to pay for content that's mostly benefiting us directly, though there are ways to soft-market things, like if there's a particular piece of gear or a bait we really believe in and we've built a good relationship with that brand, and it's getting in front of millions of eyes a month, that's worth something if there's brand consistency. But a bigger piece is taking the multimedia skills we've built for our own content and creating content for other brands in the industry — not necessarily branded as an Uncle Larry's video, but using the fact that we're already out filming to produce something of value: send us rods, reels, and baits, and we'll film your ads. If we don't believe in a product, we won't associate it with us or with the brand publicly, but we'll still do that corporate side of the work. If we do believe in it, even better, because then you get natural product integration in the videos, since we'll have that gear on hand for weeks, months, or years. What we've realized is that we can come out with professional-looking content, rather than a blog-ish style, and be consistent about delivering when we say we will. A lot of people in this industry are happy to make content for free, so if a brand sends someone rods and asks for videos, they might get one or two back and then the excitement fades. What people are really paying for is consistency — if someone sends us rods and needs ads done by the end of the month, we're upfront and honest about what those will look like and when we'll deliver them. A lot of people in the industry have probably thought of us as goofy, ridiculous Jersey guys who might get into some trouble, and there's an element of truth to that, but when we say we're going to do something for a return, we take it seriously, and I think people are starting to recognize that. We're building those relationships over time, and different people see value in different things — some want soft integration, a big fish shown with their rod on our page, others want a straight-up corporate ad that will never go on our Instagram but that we'll produce for them to use however they want. There's work that's not directly tied to our logo but still real, because a company like Shimano needs pictures and videos for their next line of reels, for ICAST, for the magazines — they still need those things, and the more one company invests in marketing, the more everyone else has to keep up. So there is opportunity — you just have to be creative, develop the right relationships, and be consistent.

Tom Rowland: Very good. Tell me about the positive message you've mentioned a couple of times — the one underlying everything you're doing.

The Message Behind Uncle Larry Outdoors

Eric: It really goes back to what I was saying about the feeling — it means so much to all of us individually to be out there fishing and experiencing these things. As the person who does a lot of the video work for Uncle Larry's, my goal is for people to watch one of these edits and feel inspired to go experience that themselves, whether it's inside or outside of fishing. Like the last video I put up, with Kai and me catching redfish — you can hear the laugh I have when I hook up to one of those nice redfish, I sound like a five-year-old. I want people to see that, to feel it, and to go chase that themselves, whatever it is for them. I think this life is such a beautiful gift, and we really owe it to God for putting us here to make the most of it, and I just want people to feel that.

Tom Rowland: What about you, Kai?

Kai: Yeah, I definitely resonate with that. I think the biggest takeaway I want people to get is to find their passion. One of the things that stuck with me from the comments on that viral video was people asking themselves, “Damn, I don't even know what makes me this happy — I need to find something that makes me want to scream like that.” Just having people ask themselves what their passion is, what their purpose is, why they're here, what they really love to do, and how they can do that in a fulfilling way — I think that's the overall message I'd like people to take away: do what fulfills you, do what you're passionate about, and do it to the fullest.

Tom Rowland: I love it. We couldn't end it any better than that, right about an hour in almost exactly, ending on a positive message. I love that. This whole conversation was really reminiscent of the early days of this podcast, and that was the underlying question then too — why did you make this change in your life to move into fishing? A lot of other people have had a similar pull toward the fishing world — it's their passion, it's what gets them excited, and they quit a job or moved to a different part of the country just like you guys did, so they could do this. So I love what you're doing, I think it's really great, and I wish you the best of luck. How do people follow you?

Johnny: Uncle Larry Outdoors on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube — and if there are any other platforms we need to get on, we'll get there.

Tom Rowland: Somebody send us a comment.

Johnny: I'm just kidding.

Tom Rowland: Alright, man. I'm sure you'll pick up some new followers from this, and you've got at least one — I'm following you guys now, and I like what you're doing. It's really cool. Alright, it was awesome to meet you guys. We'll be back next week with another great guest, just like these guys from Uncle Larry's. That's it, we'll see you next week.

Johnny: See you.