Scott Ammerman: From Passion to Profession | Guiding, Innovation, & the Next Chapter

Hey, everyone out there. Thank you so much for tuning into another addicted fishing podcast. I'm pretty excited about today's podcast because this is someone who's never actually, he's been in a couple of our live streams and he's done some stuff with us, but he's never actually come to the studio and he's standing right here next to me. So why don't you just really quick introduce yourself? Yeah. Excited to be here. I'm Scott Ammerman, uh, been a fishing guide for a minute here in the Northwest. Uh, I think the last job I had that wasn't guiding was in 89. So it's just what I've done for a long period of time. So excited to be here today. Yeah, man. We're really excited to have you. So before we get too far into the podcast, we got to say huge shout out to Procure Bait Sets because today's sponsor of today's podcast is Procure. So shout out Procure. And we'll be diving into some of that stuff a little later. Cause Scott just released some stuff with Procure, his own little, uh, line of scents and cures and additives. And I'm excited for him to talk about them. So just stick with us here. Cause he's got some stuff we're going to talk about, but before we do that, like for the people that don't know, you're like know who you are, know your whole story, just talk about like how you got started in fishing maybe, and then why you decided to build a whole life around it. Sure. I was pretty lucky that as a kid, my dad was a fishing guide. So kind of whenever he had a free day, he'd call me and be like, Hey, can you come get in the boat today? And, you know, if he had an open seat or something like that, I'd jump in his clients and do that kind of stuff. So I started fishing from a young age. And when I got old enough to drive, you know, I could drive over and jump on the boat anytime he had an open seat. And then pretty soon I'd be driving over and he'd be like, Hey, just grab the other boat and just take it for the day. And so the next thing I know, I'm taking friends of mine out fishing and just going kind of every chance I could get. I just loved it. I couldn't get enough fishing. So I was always going out and pretty soon my dad's looking at me going, Hey, you got friends coming over every week. You should get your friends to give you 50 bucks to cover expenses every time you come. And I'm like, man, I'm in college. I don't have friends that have 50 bucks, let alone, you know, going to give me 50 bucks to go fishing. So he's like, well, I got guys, they'll give you a 50 or a hundred bucks anytime you want to go and just make a few extra dollars. So I started doing that a little bit on the side, just, you know, taking a random guy that'd give me a little bit of money. And next thing I know, they're all calling me like, Hey, when can we go again? That was really fun on Tuesday. Can we go next Tuesday? And I'd be like, well, I could probably skip class on Tuesday. And so I'd skip class over and do that. And I was like, I better get a guide's license. And so I got a guide's license when I was a teenager and started guiding from. Teenage on. And when I graduated college, I told my now wife that I was going to try it for a year, see how it went. And I said, the last job I had that wasn't guiding was an 89. So it's been a minute. Yeah. I was curious if you were, I was waiting for you to see if you were going to say you graduated college or not yet, because I feel like, you know, you're, you get excited, you're chasing it. It'd be really easy just to bail. You know, you see a lot of sports players do it and I always think it's admirable when they go back and get their college degree. It's pretty cool. Um, so this would be kind of an interesting question, I think. So you've seen a lot of changes in Northwest fishing. Do you think that there was such thing as like the glory days that you remember where it was just like insane compared to what it is today? You know, I think in some ways, like what we got going on in the Oregon coast right now with our broodstock steelhead programs that we're in the glory days right now, but in a lot of ways, there's a lot of things we're doing that, you know, have a lot of room to grow and have definitely went backwards, you know, but I mean, look at our coho runs, the fish advocacy work we've done to get our coho runs back, at least with our wild coho returns in the Oregon coast have been great. We figured out doing ocean harvest reform and habitat restoration. You know, one of the rivers I fish all the time, we had years where we had 300 coho a year coming back to that river. And in the last 10 years, we've had years that we had over 20,000. So it's really cool to see that coming back. So in some ways we're doing something right, but we have a lot of room to grow to get our fisheries back. Absolutely. I would have fully agree with you. Like, I see the same thing. Like, it feels like there's some fisheries that are still like, you know, I'll hear people say, oh, fishing sucks. And I'm kind of like, it hasn't really sucked that bad. I've been doing pretty good, you know, but then you, there's other fisheries where you're like, man, I remember how that used to be. And that's just guiding. When I first started guiding that I would go a whole season and not catch coho on, you know, our coastal rivers where I fish and we wouldn't catch coho all season that incidentally, while we were catching Chinooks and had days this last year that, you know, we caught 30 or 40 of them trying to catch Chinooks only. And then I had days where we targeted the coho that we caught 50 to 70 coho a day. So like, that's pretty incredible to see how well that has rebounded and came back. And so for me, you know, I've made a living being a guide for a long period of time, and I've really focused on trying to work more towards fish advocacy work, doing a couple of nonprofits, uh, trying to give back to our fisheries, fighting as a champion for all of our fisheries to get more opportunities and more fish back. Yeah, absolutely. And I see you do a lot of that. I've supported a few of your organizations that you, that you work with. And, you know, I think it's all of us at some point in our lives, in our careers, in our fishing, you know, I think that's the direction we go, you know, we have to, we all need to help. We all need to try to support and do everything that we can to keep our fisheries alive. I think on the other side of it, you know, it's hard and I'm sure you've seen it as well, you know, as you're guiding and you're got a full-time job and you're guiding every day and you're waking up every day. And it's hard to dedicate that time to also the advocacy, you know what I mean? And I get it all the time from people that'll be like, Oh, what does addicted do for our fisheries? You know? And it's like, well, we actually do a lot. You just don't see it. And you may not see much of it, especially Cameron in particular, you know, but I think also when you're trying to run a business and have a family and do everything that you're doing, it's tough. It's really tough to take the time. Have you noticed that same thing? Yeah, for sure. It's hard to find the time to do stuff. And I'll tell you, when my kids were little and they were in sports and I was coaching sports and doing stuff, it was hard to find the time. But now that they went off to college and, you know, me and my wife are empty nesters, I've really decided to dedicate a lot more of my time. And I will tell you that I'm super happy to be here because anytime I've reached out to the fishing addicts and said, Hey, you know, we're doing our annual banquet here, I mean, you guys literally came over and filmed an episode and did that kind of stuff while we're doing our banquet every year, you send us a giant box of stuff, the biggest box of stuff we get every year that's, you know, all the stuff that we auction off that we raffle that we give away. So, I mean, you guys have been a huge support for all of our advocacy work too. So just, you know, glad to go full circle me back here. Absolutely. Scott. And that's one of the things, you know, I actually get kind of in trouble from my accountant with that a lot because every single person that emails us, like, and I probably shouldn't even be saying this publicly, but I pretty much donate, like I, I try to support any single thing I can. I actually have a little thing on my desk right now from the Clark County jail. Cause I went in, there was like some jail inmates that were like been locked up for a while and like, they just eat, breathe and sleep fishing. And so I went in and just went into a room and just chatted with them, hung out for a little bit and chatted with people in the jail. And then I, we donated a bunch of stuff to their auction and stuff, but it's, uh, I try to do as much as I can in the time that I have allotted. Cause I think it's important to give back to what's given to us. You know, I thought you started telling a story there about how you got booked into the jail. I was listening. Yeah, you know, that was my younger years when I was in juvie, not, not actual jail. So, so no, I mean, it's, it's great. I've done the same thing, you know, having a egg and cure business and that kind of stuff. And, you know, I get called 50 times a year and asked to donate a guided trip. But as a fishing guide, you have to be very careful about what you give to and what you don't do. And, you know, this last weekend we did a cast for kids event where we went out and did took crap, took kids crabbing and we had 38 kids show up with their families and we got them out in boats and got them crabbing and doing stuff. And so it's just fun to do outdoor stuff and give back. But I try to limit my giving of days of fishing to like two a year. And usually it's some kind of kids event or that kind of stuff. But usually if someone calls me, I'm giving them cure products, eggs, those kind of things. So we do a lot of that too. And that's what I appreciate about you guys. You're always super willing to help out. Yeah, I appreciate that, Scott. So let's get into a little bit of this, some stories. Cause I know you got to have some Epic stories. So of all of the fish and all the years, is there any one fishing story, one fish that still stands out above everything else? I have one that is when I first figured out my cold water set, we had a really weird November year where the water got super cold. The weather outside got into the teens every day for a week and we hadn't really had a big rain yet. So all the fish were still stacked in tidewater and I'm on this river and we're fishing the tidewater and the water got into the low forties and into the thirties. And I will tell you, we had a week that it was like playing a video game on God mode. And we literally went out and it was cold. So I just told my clients to show up at 10. We'll go out at 10. We'd get there. There'd be a huge line of boats. We'd go ask if anybody caught one, nobody caught one yet. We'd pull in wherever it was open, start casting and just, we'd hook, I think for 10 day period, I never saw another fish landed by another boat and we never had a day we had less than 20. And I mean, we'd pull out in the middle of everybody and I had like one of my clients brought his wife and I'm going, okay, I'm going to cast this bobber out. You're going to hold that bobber. I started baiting up the second hook. It goes, as soon as that bobber goes down, all I want you to do is tell me. And she goes, well, it's down right now. It's been like three seconds and I look over and sure enough, she has a fish on and, you know, we land it and we're just lighting them up. And so pretty soon, like two or three of the boats that are farther back behind us come running up and they're getting as close to us as they can. And so we pull out of the row and go back and anchor where they just were. And just it's every cast we're catching one. And I mean, one of my clients that's became a longtime client called me and he's like, man, I heard you were on the river today. Cause I talked to my buddy and he was supposed to go to a different river. So I called him and said, how was fishing? And he goes, oh, it's really slow. He goes, unless you were Scott and he goes slow. Like he caught a couple and he goes, no. So like, I never saw another fish caught except for Scott and my client goes, well, how many do you see Scott get? And he goes, well, I was watching him. I saw him get 27. So, I mean, it was probably the most fun. And if you go Google it, I think on I fish somewhere, there's still like somebody that wrote a report about sitting there watching me for three days saying Scott Ammerman's a fishing guide. And it was just like one of the funnest, most cool things. But it was figuring out what those fish wanted when it was cold. And they wouldn't eat anybody else's things, but they'd eat mine every cast. That's really, really cool. That's really cool. Well, so who were some of the people that you learned from? Obviously you talk about your dad a little bit, obviously, but who else? Like, were there other people that taught you things and do you still use any of those things today? Like, is there one thing that someone taught you that's just been like today you're still doing the exact stuff? I'm one of those people that I'm really quick to tell the influences that I got, you know, brought into my dad was probably the best salmon egg fisherman in the Northwest when I started guiding. Um, but he was really quiet. He didn't do sponsorships. He'd never talked about his fish he caught. He didn't, you know, post pictures. They didn't do anything like that. But, um, so he taught me a lot, got me started. It took me five years of guiding before I could beat him a day a week. And then, you know, 10 years of guiding before I was beating him half the days. And then I got really lucky and, you know, got in with Kevin Lund was one of the better salmon fishermen in Northwest. One day approached me and said, if you knew everything I knew and I knew everything you knew, think about how good we both could be. I was like, that makes a lot of sense. So we started fishing together and then I got lucky one year, some guy booked a trip and his name was Jay Ellis. And I didn't know who he was. And he came out fishing me all day long. I was correcting this casting. And then he got home and sent me his book of how he won the FLW tour championship, and now he's in the bass fishing hall of fame. And we have had a great friendship now for 20 years since then. And I will tell you that just the conversations I've had with him about fishing, bass fishing techniques, different stuff he did unbelievably made my, made me a better fisherman. And then, you know, I, I hired Grant Shealy to work for me. I hired Ian Primo to work for me. I work with 20 or so other guides and I learned something from every one of them teaches me something. And as soon as you think you can't learn anymore, then you might as well just go sit on the couch. I a hundred percent agree with that statement. Like it seems I even find myself getting that way. Where people will be telling me something I'll back. No, it doesn't work. I don't, I'm not even going to mess with it. And Cameron's, he does that all the time. For sure. Just look at him. He's just, he's usually pretty negative about that stuff. One of the funniest things I'll tell you is I was literally walking on my elliptical watching the video and cam's like, I'm going to show you how to, how do you rig your eggs on this hook? And he brings a bait eggs on, he wraps the line around it. I know how to pull it. Eggs live cinch. And all of a sudden he goes, so what I do is I wrap it twice like this and pull it tight. So it's twice around it. And I was like, that's ridiculous. Then I started doing it and now I do it every time I finish. I learned that one from cam. And do that. No, I swear to you by that video, dude, it was the coat. We were on the, one of the coastal rivers. Yeah. Like I remember when we made that video, that's so awesome. It's just so funny. I literally was watching that and I was like, I don't know. Why would it make a difference to wrap it twice? You know what my, you know what my like brain moment with Cameron was one time I was watching him do a tutorial and he was trying to get the braided line through the float. And then he just went on the other side and just sucked the braid through. And I went, you know how many times I've sat here, like struggled with trying to get this stupid braid through there. And he just did it in one second with one little breath. Yeah. No, it's crazy to, it's crazy how you get little tricks and stuff you learn. And I mean, I, I have a thing that I tell people and somebody else wrote it in the books. He overheard this story, but, um, you know, one of the first times I fished beads for a while, I think the first time I fished with cam, he was in my boat. We probably made him cast a bead all day. And I don't know, that was 20 years ago. I don't know. And, um, but I'd never really ran a bead dangle, you know, dropper behind a bait. And I was talking to Jay Ellis and he started talking to me about how the Alabama rig came into bass fishing world and how it just changed everything in the bass fishing world and how these fish their whole lives had never eaten a single bait fish. They'd always eaten schools of bait fish. And we started talking and we were driving over to steal it fishing. And as we were talking, I was like, I wonder what would happen if I took that bead rig and put it off the back of my egg rig here, like below my Yarny and started side drifting those with side drifting and then eventually started doing those under a bobber. And now you can't go any fishery in the Northwest where somebody is not doing that. And it's insane. But that was the first time I did that was just through talking to him. And so at first I was learning from a bass fisherman. I mean, some of those guys are smart, I guess. Yeah. So I know cam's doing a lot more of that now, but it's a, they definitely, they just have a different mindset about it and approach and you know, it's a lot of competitive fishing. And I think that's what really made me really good is that we have some fisheries where we fish that it's like Drano where it's super competitive and super crowded and you think it's insane that you're even in there in the middle of all those people, bobber fishing. And you know, but when you're in the middle of 50 boats, bobber fishing, and you know, you see two fish caught all day by everybody else and you caught 15, you go, okay, I had something dialed in pretty good. And you know, and some of those people are friends of yours that you're helping them, telling them what depth you're fishing and what you're doing and you just get something dialed in. Yeah, so that's a perfect way to segue into, so like you're known for baits and cures. Like that's how I always knew you growing up. That's how I feel like a lot of people recognize Scott Ammerman, the Ammerman cure, the Ammerman eggs. How did that obsession start? Like what, what made you gravitate towards bait like that? I think that, like I said, when I started fishing, my dad was the best egg fisherman in the Northwest. So we'd routinely pulling around people pulling right as a boat was leaving and start catching fish right after they just fished the hole. So that really started it for me. And then just that competitive desire to figure out how my dad was so much better than everybody else. And trying to eventually, when I started guiding, trying to figure out how to beat him a day a week and how to, you know, be able to be as good a fisherman as he was. And then my brain just works that way that a lot of people will grab something and go, man, this, whatever it is works, but my brain goes, why does it work? What are we getting in these fish reactions? What are we doing? And so then I'm probably the one person that is dove deeper into the science behind all the fish and what they react and why they react, what their bodies are being depleted of. And I mean, I had some amazing conversations with Jay Ellis about that, talking about scents and patterns and different stuff that we did that was, you know, like how bass react when they're spawning versus how they act, react when they're guarding a bed or all those kinds of things. And so just looking at different stuff. And so I'm the person that anytime something works, I'm not okay with saying, okay, this particular thing worked when the water is 55 degrees. But if you keep a journal, I kept a journal for 25 years that I did as well, where every time I went fishing, if I caught fish on a certain scent and the water was 57 degrees and we're fishing in the brackish saltwater, I wrote down what was working and the next year I went back and if it was 57 degrees and I'm in that brackish saltwater, that exact same thing worked again. So you start finding patterns and that kind of thing. And I always explain to people like if it's 110 degrees outside and you're out there sweating all day and doing work, you come in and go, man, you know, that watermelon looks really good. I'd love to have some fresh watermelon. So you brought in a big container of it when you came in. So it's because your body's being depleted of water and you want to replace those nutrients is, but you don't walk in from 110 degrees and go, man, you know, it sounds really good. Hot cocoa. But if you're out in 22 degree weather all day fishing and stuff like that, you might come in and say hot cocoa sounds good. Well, salmon are the same way when the water's a certain temperature, they're probably ate something, a certain thing their whole life at those water temperatures. So we really try to gear towards how they react, what they do in those temperatures, what their bodies crave, what kind of metabolic changes they're going through. So I've thought about it as a science that if I honestly explained it to everybody, I think most people's heads would probably explode. Yeah, I know. For sure, for sure. So what do you think the biggest mistake people make when they're curing and fishing bait? Biggest mistake people make is they experiment to try to figure out what's going to work when the fish aren't biting. So if the fish aren't biting and you start experimenting with everything in your tackle box, it doesn't help you at all because the fish either aren't there or they're not biting. So if you experiment when the fishing is really good, sometimes that's the best time to experiment to see what do they bite more? What do they stop biting? So sometimes you want to see, Hey, I've got this one thing that's working really well and it's catching fish, but what if I put this other bait out there for a second, would they bite that one as well? Are they going to stop? Are they going to do whatever? So to me, I do more experimenting and more, you know, whatever, when the fishing's good and if it's a struggle, I go to my go to know what works and just grind because you know that what you have and what's trusted is going to work. So that's for me, the biggest mistake most people make is experimenting and trying to figure out what works when they're not biting. That's, that makes a ton of sense. So let's talk a little bit now with that being said, because as you've already spoken and said, you've had years and years and years and years of testing different things, and now you've taken all that and you've launched your own line of additives. I don't even really know. I know that we carry it all, which you can get it all on the addicted website guys, if you want to purchase it, but what all is it, what all did you make? Maybe just give us a quick rundown of what the products are and what each of them does. So I have two egg cures, fat egg cures on the market for a number of years. I have a salmon and steel at egg cure and we have two different colors for those. Um, they're just literally from curing your eggs. When you get it, make it kind of foolproof, something you can go do, catch your own fish, how to preserve bait, do that kind of stuff. And then I have four cents that I've made and the sense that I've made are things that I've figured out over the years that I was always reluctant to let anybody hear about or know about. I kept it as a secret to myself because I wanted that advantage everyday fishing. So I have a one that's called cold water and it's pretty self-explanatory. If the water's cooler, this is going to be one that's lights out. I just told you stories about when it was in the forties and thirties, how incredible that was, but this is my go-to my guide friends that fish Oregon city. This is their go-to Oregon city bait. When that water's below 50, even up to 55, this is their go-to it's going to get them to buy if I'm on the coast for fall Chinook or even on the, you know, like upper Willamette tributaries, we had a couple of them that got really cold the last couple of weeks and that cold water stuff that hadn't worked for two weeks started working really well again. So that's my cold water stuff. Um, I have one that's called the salmon stuffer. It's a, to me, it is, you know, you're going to stuff the salmon when you put this one on there, it's a very thick, um, you know, pasty gel that I've made and I'd put it on bait and then eventually I was having to do the three 60 troll thing, which I hate, but I had to go do that because I had to be competitive with everybody else out there. And I found I could put this on my spinners and it's a thick enough pace that it would really stay on the spinners. I literally have some spinners in my garage that I fished a month ago. The last time I pro trolled and they still smell today. So I was moving tackle around in my garage. I'm like, wow, those things still stink. And so it just stays on there. What I'd say is anybody that wants to see what it's like, take mine and then their favorite scent, put two drops of it. One of mine, one of theirs, and look at the consistency of mine. Look at the consistency of theirs. And they'll see the difference in just the makeup of the product and that kind of thing. And then, so that one's predominantly, you ought to come up here in the fall and we'll do a little Ammerman salmon stuffer versus addicted salmon blend. And we'll put three on either side and we'll just use the same baits and we'll see, we'll see which one goes, let's do it. I said, that'd be incredible. Yeah, it'd be fun to do. And I know that I've had a number of friends that thought they were as dialed in as they could be at buoy 10 or dialed in as they could be on the upper Columbia. And they told me that once they put my stuff on there and started running my stuff on half the rods and their stuff on half the rods, just watching the live scope that they would watch fish come into the live scope. And they said, yeah, we'd get one out of every three to eat my stuff that I was pretty good at. And I thought that was pretty good. Getting one out of every three that came into my live scope to eat it. He goes literally every one of them that came in on the side, your stuff was on eight, like every fish, I didn't have a fish come in and the gear and leave like for two whole days. So it was pretty fun. I'm excited to try it. Smells. So to me, to me, it's one that I'll show a little demonstration on your live feed and a little bit about how we mix it into our tuna blend it. To me, I replaced the canned oils and canned tuna, and I mix this in there and I'll show you how we do that. And then I have a sprinkle additive that I've made. That is a additive. You sprinkle over your baits, whether that's stuffer baits, whether that's salmon eggs, that kind of thing. It's an additive that is an olfactory response thing to the bait. So it really kicks the fish into stimulating their sense of smell. So like you can have an aquarium that where the fish won't eat inside the aquarium, they literally have to do stuff where those fish put off a fear pheromone and they just won't react. They have to do stuff to train those fish to bite and feed in the aquarium or they'll starve to death. So what we find is we have to, um, if you stimulate their sense of olfactory sense, they'll come eat your baits. But the reason why it's a sprinkle and not something that's an additive you put on your eggs when you're curing them and that kind of stuff is because the fish don't like the taste of it, but they react to the smell of it. And so it's a good external. So you want an olfactory response versus a taste response in salmon. So those are the two things you get in a salmon responses and olfactory stimulate their sense of smell, get them to come eat. So that's what I try to do. So then the third one we have is our hyper shrimp formula. To me, when I use procures products, they're my favorite one was their shrimp formula. And so I just, I said, man, I love their shrimp formula. And so I just said, how can I tweak that and make it a little bit better and make it a little bit more, you know, get those fish to respond to it. So I kind of started with tweaking that and trying to make it, and we just called it hyper shrimp because it's something that works really well. And I mean, I just had a friend of mine, it smells like the most gnarly shrimp you've ever smelled. It's, it's hyper shrimp. Yeah, no, it's, it's definitely, it's definitely pretty cool. And so we did that and, um, he just was out here plunking for springers out of, you know, the mouth of a prawn can for summer steelhead and caught multiple summer steelhead on that this week. And it was like, I want to try your hyper shrimp. And so I was glad to see that it was catching steelhead and stuff like that too. And then the final one we have is called skunk repellent. And that was one, my youngest son came up with the name of that. Cause you know, what's the worst thing that can happen if you go fishing is getting skunked. So this repels that, and it's a very, uh, it's a very harsh scent that will smack those fish in the face and kind of force them to come bite. And, um, to me, that's something like right now, if you're up fishing on springer still, like we spent this week fishing on springers in a number of spots, like when those fish are in there and they won't bite, you put this stuff on there and they bite like crazy. And, um, you know, that that's one. And then for me, fall Chinook, as soon as fall Chinook stack up somewhere, start staging, start getting older, start, you know, getting to where they've been in the river for maybe a week or two, and they're starting to change colors and those kinds of things. We try to, uh, do that one for that. Yeah, I like the name. The name's awesome. Skunk repellent. As soon as my son, I was telling him, I was bouncing names off my family. And he's like, what do you think about this? And I was like, Oh my God, I love that. So a couple of little last minute questions, guys, we're going to make this podcast a little shorter than what we normally do guys. Cause we are going to do a live stream tonight with Scott, but we'll get him back in here. I feel like we, I feel like we can get him back or we get your remotes. You don't have to sit in the traffic. I'm very confident. We'll do it again. Yeah, for sure. Um, so with technology, social media and everything else, do you think anglers are better fishermen today? Or do you think they just have better tools? I mean, I think better tools make them better fishermen, but I, you're also talking to the one guy that doesn't have a live scope yet. So it's a pretty hilarious when you're fishing around all these people. And I will say it's really annoying when my friends that are really good at live scope go by me and they'll go, Oh, it looks like you're fishing 33 feet deep under your barber. And I'm like, Oh, how do they know how deep I'm fishing? I mean, I used to have this secret where nobody would ever know where my barber was. You know, we get some big deep holes. I didn't even think about that. They just, they'll literally go by me and they're so good at their live stuff that they'll see my baits. And, you know, Oh, you can watch how deep people are trolling and see how deep other, that boat over there is caught three in a row. Look at that. It's a good idea. Every time I don't know, I'm just going to go next to him. Oh, there he's at. Oh, yep. That's where he's at. Well, I mean, so for us, you know, I think a lot of times we fish in tidewater where we got heavy swings of the tide and they'll see, Oh man, I'm fishing 15 feet deep and my baits only getting to 12, I'm not getting to where the fish are. And so, you know, I think that we've had to become a lot better fisherman because fishing is more competitive. It's harder. It's all that stuff. So I think we have become lots better fishermen and technology is a big part of that. Yeah, for sure. Okay. So after everything you accomplished, what keeps you excited about fishing and what do you hope, like you leave for a legacy of Scott Ammerman? Well, so to me, I kind of mentioned it earlier. I didn't want to be that person that everybody looked at and goes, man, that guy was the best at catching the resource. He was able to take more of the resource than everybody else. I wanted to be the person that went back and started doing advocacy work and doing stuff to give back. So to me, you know, like we just fought at ODF and W at the level and we're supposedly getting an LC coho fishery after the ODF and W said, we weren't going to get a, you know, LC coho fishery this year, we went and testified in front of the commission and got, you know, the, the okay to have a coho fishery on the LC, we haven't got the date set yet, but we also added seven days to three of the other rivers that are on the coast and so it's nice to get more fish for everybody else, you know, having rivers that we get, you know, larger limits and that kind of stuff to me, you know, I'll fill my boat with clients, whether it's one fish limit or two fish limits, but you get these people that are over there, you know, and it's a two fish annual limit and they're there for a week. Like that sucks. So I like fighting for everybody else and trying to get more fish back for everyone else. And we've started with the broodstock programs and you know, we now have broodstock programs and almost all the big rivers on the Oregon coast. And as we spread people out, there's more fish for everybody. Absolutely. And I think that's the key. We were talking about that before the podcast is like, you know, that's one of the things that's happened. We've just lost so many fisheries. Cameron always uses the analogy of a soccer field. You know, if people love to play soccer and they all go to us, you know, and then all of a sudden there's only one soccer field, they're all going to go play soccer. Like, and it's the same with fishing. Like we've been so restricted to just a few rivers that people know. I mean, it doesn't take long for people to figure out that this is the river that's doing good. Information spreads quick. A lot of people think it's online, but I personally think a lot of it is more word of mouth. You know, when I was a kid, we used to go to the Wilson or the Nestaka sometimes, and there'd be a 30 or 40 minute launch line every morning. And people blame the fact that there was articles and magazines and stuff like that for the crowd. But, you know, it's people are always going to figure out where to go, whether they're calling the tackle shop, whether they're watching your show, whether they're, you know, calling their buddies, people are going to figure it out and they're going to go do it. And so if anything, a lot of things we've spread the crowd out by doing broodstock programs. We don't get fish to return for one month. We get fish to return for, you know, three or four months during the steelhead season. So you get three or four months worth of fishing instead of a really good two weeks. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Well, that's awesome, Scott. I really appreciate you coming in here, man. And like I said, we're going to have to do this again, cause I have so many other questions for you that I want to ask you. Um, so we'll have to get you in here for another podcast for sure. I think we could do like, yeah, for sure. Let's do it. We can always, I'm a talker. That's my problem, but yeah, it'll be perfect. All right, everyone. Thanks again for listening. Don't forget, shout out to procure Batesense for sponsoring today's podcast. Actually. I think I got sent a code. Let me just go look on my email real quick. Procure was going to offer you guys a code. Yup. They did 20% off procure on their website. Guys use code addicted, 20% off on procures website. Use the code addicted. So head over to procure, shout out to procure for sponsoring today's podcast. And until next time, guys, see you on the river.