Let's Talk About Fishburgh and the Kid Who Left Different (S2E4)

WEBVTT
00:00:00.110 --> 00:00:04.322
They go fishing and, he's not the same kid that he was when he showed up the first time.
00:00:05.051 --> 00:00:10.141
That's a kid who left different than he arrived because someone decided to show up for him.
00:00:10.141 --> 00:00:24.605
Maybe you already know what it feels like, calm and lit up at the same time.
00:00:24.605 --> 00:00:27.495
The healthy thing you reach for when life gets heavy.
00:00:27.495 --> 00:00:29.394
For Phil Papa, it's fishing.
00:00:29.394 --> 00:00:31.844
This episode is about finding yours.
00:00:31.844 --> 00:00:38.167
Phillip, welcome to This is It! We're glad to have you here with us today.
00:00:38.167 --> 00:00:49.899
You have something special to share with us, and you piqued our interest because we're all about, people finding their way through all the layers of life and what brings them joy, in the journey.
00:00:49.899 --> 00:00:58.689
Before we get into everything that Fishburgh does in the city, I wanted you to tell us, how does a person end up making fishing their life's work in Pittsburgh?
00:00:59.716 --> 00:01:04.486
Well, it starts pretty early, probably around, I'm gonna say the mid-'90s.
00:01:04.486 --> 00:01:06.496
We'll use 1995.
00:01:06.496 --> 00:01:12.816
I just, I loved it ever since my dad took me to that little pond in Highland Park, Carnegie Lake, next to the swimming pool.
00:01:12.816 --> 00:01:14.777
Started catching some bluegills.
00:01:14.777 --> 00:01:25.427
It was pretty simple, and just that first initial, fish, catching it, and, the joy and rush that I got, there's a saying, they say, "The tug is the drug." It carries on.
00:01:25.427 --> 00:01:27.436
So, I've loved it ever since.
00:01:27.436 --> 00:01:33.066
I couldn't get, enough fishing, so I just really wanted to share that with as many people as I could.
00:01:33.066 --> 00:01:37.876
And one thing that I noticed is that, in the inner city especially, fishing's not really cool.
00:01:37.876 --> 00:01:47.287
Not a lot of people are into it, and, that was likely because people just had never had that first experience and, the success of catching fish early.
00:01:47.287 --> 00:01:52.046
So I started just volunteering and, it became the thing for me.
00:01:52.046 --> 00:01:53.557
I've caught a ton of big fish.
00:01:53.557 --> 00:02:04.656
I've caught a lot of stuff that people would only dream about, and after a while, the new challenge was: how can I help create this for other people who otherwise wouldn't be interested in it?
00:02:04.656 --> 00:02:06.057
And it's just snowballed from there.
00:02:06.206 --> 00:02:09.477
So somebody planted a seed for you, and you said that was your dad.
00:02:09.477 --> 00:02:10.227
That was your father.
00:02:11.052 --> 00:02:11.143
Yeah
00:02:11.556 --> 00:02:13.556
You'd get along w-well with my son.
00:02:13.556 --> 00:02:15.417
He lives, breathes, and eats fishing.
00:02:15.417 --> 00:02:23.646
And, that came through his dad, who was introduced to fishing from his grandfather who used to fish down behind the Penn.
00:02:23.646 --> 00:02:26.383
Yes
00:02:26.531 --> 00:02:26.770
The carp spot?
00:02:26.770 --> 00:02:32.510
That was a really popular spot for carp and catfish, which is pretty much all we had, back when grandfather was fishing.
00:02:32.510 --> 00:02:45.721
There wasn't a whole lot of game fish, so carp and catfish was basically what you were gonna catch if you expected to catch anything, and that spot there particularly, I'm not exactly sure why, has always been and is still today,
00:02:46.061 --> 00:02:46.161
Yeah.
00:02:47.372 --> 00:02:48.481
A pretty well-known spot for them.
00:02:48.481 --> 00:02:48.731
Yeah.
00:02:49.441 --> 00:02:53.871
And as far as bodies of water go that are in the city it's, it's mainly rivers, right?
00:02:53.871 --> 00:02:56.281
You go to Carnegie...
00:02:57.241 --> 00:03:04.114
Yeah, that's a lake, but that's a man-made lake that just feeds into the river, yeah.
00:03:04.901 --> 00:03:05.972
Then it's stocked?
00:03:06.852 --> 00:03:11.282
Uh, we, get it stocked once a year, catfish and bass.
00:03:11.282 --> 00:03:14.701
There's been sunfish and bluegills in there for as long as I can remember.
00:03:14.701 --> 00:03:18.361
They just seem to just materialize out of thin air any time you got a body of water.
00:03:19.042 --> 00:03:21.062
The ones that are fun for the kids to catch.
00:03:22.264 --> 00:03:24.163
That's the one on the logo, it's the pumpkinseed.
00:03:24.163 --> 00:03:32.704
They have two goals or two missions in life, and that's to feed bass and be caught by children, and they do a good job of it.
00:03:33.192 --> 00:03:37.512
Phil, when did you decide to take this from a hobby to what it is now?
00:03:37.512 --> 00:03:41.681
What happened to get you to the point of creating Fishburgh?
00:03:42.838 --> 00:03:46.429
So, it started, I was leaving the Highland Park swimming pool.
00:03:46.429 --> 00:03:51.658
I was with my wife, and my daughter was two years old at that time, there's a little cabin there.
00:03:51.658 --> 00:04:01.128
I don't know if you're familiar with it, but there's a small little wooden cabin that's at the one end of the lake, and ever since I was a kid, I've never seen it open.
00:04:01.128 --> 00:04:03.359
I've never seen anybody going in there.
00:04:03.359 --> 00:04:21.559
I've never seen it used for anything, and, we would always fantasize about what it was for, what was in there, so, fast-forward to maybe about six years ago, I was leaving the pool with my wife and daughter, and any time there's a body of water, I always gotta go check it out, even if it's somewhere like that I've been a thousand times.
00:04:21.559 --> 00:04:27.278
So, we're walking over, and lo and behold, the cabin door is open.
00:04:27.896 --> 00:04:28.166
Oh.
00:04:28.598 --> 00:04:41.319
It's open, and there's a couple older gentlemen there, and maybe, like, three children, and they're in front of the cabin, so, I got the impression that they were the ones who opened it, and I said, "Babe, I might not ever get this chance again in my life.
00:04:41.319 --> 00:04:43.098
I gotta see what's in this,
00:04:43.161 --> 00:04:44.151
What's in there?
00:04:44.668 --> 00:04:49.559
Yeah, so spoiler alert, cobwebs and, like, just crust and,
00:04:50.119 --> 00:04:50.468
nothing!
00:04:52.459 --> 00:04:55.749
This group was having a youth fishing event.
00:04:55.749 --> 00:04:58.788
I believe they were called Pittsburgh Let's Go Fishing at the time.
00:04:58.788 --> 00:05:03.959
The Reverend Spencer Simon, he explained to me what they were doing.
00:05:03.959 --> 00:05:08.619
They were just trying to get some kids fishing, and I said, "Sign me up." How can I do this?
00:05:08.619 --> 00:05:15.468
How can I get signed up for this?" So, he gave me the clipboard, I signed up, and I started volunteering with them, and I loved it.
00:05:15.468 --> 00:05:16.629
I absolutely loved it.
00:05:16.802 --> 00:05:18.132
Yes.
00:05:18.309 --> 00:05:24.622
Anybody who knows me knows that I love to talk, I love to share information, I love to talk about fishing, I love teaching people new things.
00:05:24.622 --> 00:05:25.521
Okay.
00:05:25.788 --> 00:05:27.338
It started to snowball a little bit.
00:05:27.338 --> 00:05:28.598
I was really into it.
00:05:28.598 --> 00:05:30.399
I wanted to do it all the time.
00:05:30.399 --> 00:05:31.869
I was trying to expand the program.
00:05:31.869 --> 00:05:39.718
Well, they were a smaller organization and I feel like I was kind of thrusting more on them than they had the capacity for.
00:05:39.718 --> 00:05:43.488
I'm also, big into nature, and the who, what, where.
00:05:43.488 --> 00:05:44.559
Why are the fish here?
00:05:44.559 --> 00:05:45.639
What are the fish doing there?
00:05:45.639 --> 00:05:48.939
More so than just, let's get a group of kids together and go fishing.
00:05:48.939 --> 00:05:59.408
So after a couple years, I left to start Fishburgh Outdoors with the goal of doing a lot more than just the pond, doing a lot more than just catching the bluegills at the pond.
00:05:59.408 --> 00:06:01.499
I wanted to start taking some kids down the river.
00:06:01.499 --> 00:06:08.261
We've got a trophy bass fishery, we've got a trophy walleye fishery, we've got gigantic flathead catfish, that get to like 50 pounds.
00:06:08.261 --> 00:06:14.879
Wanted to start a program that would allow me to so much more than just catching a couple bluegills in the pond, right?
00:06:15.093 --> 00:06:15.543
Yeah.
00:06:16.250 --> 00:06:25.689
That's where, Fishburgh Outdoors came from, and once I started running my own program and was at the helm and started getting all these ideas, I said, "You know what?
00:06:25.689 --> 00:06:32.250
This is gonna become my life's work," because if I wanted to do it right, it was gonna take a tremendous amount of time and effort.
00:06:32.250 --> 00:06:32.629
So
00:06:33.033 --> 00:06:33.312
Yeah.
00:06:33.312 --> 00:06:35.202
You had the whole picture in your head.
00:06:35.495 --> 00:06:48.235
Yeah, I started looking back at how I got to the point where I'm at, you know what I mean, in life as far as fishing, and it all started at that pond, and having the success as a child that I had catching, you know.
00:06:48.235 --> 00:06:52.175
I'd go up there and catch, I'm not kidding you, like 100, 200 of these little sunfish.
00:06:52.175 --> 00:06:58.165
Granted, they're nothing to get excited about, but as a child, it meant everything to me.
00:06:58.165 --> 00:07:02.889
Was like the greatest thing ever, and it just slowly led to the next step.
00:07:02.889 --> 00:07:07.988
Okay, now I started riding my bike down to the Allegheny River behind the Tastee Freeze, you know?
00:07:07.988 --> 00:07:14.459
And then I started seeing people across the river, so then I started riding my bike across the Highland Park Bridge and fishing down there.
00:07:14.459 --> 00:07:22.939
And then I met an older kid, by the name of Sean, who was I think four years older than me and he had had a car and he had been going other places 'cause his dad was into fishing.
00:07:22.939 --> 00:07:33.178
He said, "Hey man, let's go to this spot or let's go to that spot, or let's go up Erie and catch some steelhead." And now it had really taken off, and it was all started at that pond.
00:07:33.178 --> 00:07:45.858
And had I not gone up there and fished or had I gone up there and fished and didn't catch anything, I likely would've never really got into it because fishing is, I shouldn't say this, but fishing is pretty boring.
00:07:45.858 --> 00:07:49.259
Catching's what's exciting, you know what I mean?
00:07:49.259 --> 00:07:51.649
Fishing is just just wetting the line.
00:07:51.649 --> 00:07:56.209
Catching is what we're trying to do at Fishburgh which is let's pull some fish out of the water.
00:07:56.209 --> 00:07:56.658
Let's see
00:07:56.752 --> 00:07:56.853
Yeah.
00:07:56.853 --> 00:08:00.752
You're making the bridge from boring to exciting, teaching them how to get there.
00:08:01.269 --> 00:08:08.949
The kids, they're not gonna, especially this day and age, if they're not touching the fish or seeing fish, they wanna immediately scroll social
00:08:08.952 --> 00:08:09.252
Yeah.
00:08:09.468 --> 00:08:16.848
They wanna watch YouTube or they wanna do something else, and if you're not catching them, you're not catching them, so they're, you're gonna let them go.
00:08:16.848 --> 00:08:17.798
They're gonna get away.
00:08:17.798 --> 00:08:22.968
And they're not gonna come back 'cause they'll kinda identify fishing as something boring.
00:08:22.968 --> 00:08:35.369
They'll remember, dad's like, "Hey, you wanna go fishing?" They'll remember the last time we went, we sat at this lake for four hours, you know, twiddling our thumbs, and it was hot, it was dirty, and there was no Wi-Fi and stuff like that, you know what I mean?
00:08:35.873 --> 00:08:39.873
Yeah.
00:08:40.009 --> 00:08:40.688
It was exciting.
00:08:40.688 --> 00:08:41.668
I got to see stuff.
00:08:41.668 --> 00:08:43.078
You know, that's, that's how you get them.
00:08:43.078 --> 00:08:46.688
It starts with catching those little sunfish, which is why they're such a fantastic...
00:08:46.688 --> 00:08:49.649
They're, they're most people in the United States' first fish.
00:08:49.649 --> 00:08:53.639
Me, most people, they don't just immediately go down the river and start catching 20-inch smallmouth.
00:08:53.639 --> 00:08:54.519
It just, uh, it just doesn't happen.
00:08:54.533 --> 00:08:54.592
Yeah.
00:08:55.163 --> 00:08:55.722
Oh, yeah.
00:08:55.722 --> 00:09:01.424
As soon as we brought up the panfish, I think I got a silly smile on my face 'cause it just ignites that memory.
00:09:01.424 --> 00:09:02.815
I remember that feeling.
00:09:02.815 --> 00:09:08.884
How do you handle the battle with the technology on your fishing event days?
00:09:09.282 --> 00:09:09.392
I don't worry about it.
00:09:10.831 --> 00:09:14.241
It's, it's never been a concern because we catch a lot of fish.
00:09:14.241 --> 00:09:15.351
We touch a lot of fish.
00:09:15.351 --> 00:09:19.572
So the the only phones you're gonna see out at Fishburgh are taking pictures.
00:09:20.514 --> 00:09:21.485
So what's your magic?
00:09:21.485 --> 00:09:23.355
How do you always have a good day on the water?
00:09:23.355 --> 00:09:30.014
It's, 'cause the panfish? Or just taking, you know the right spots and what to do?
00:09:30.636 --> 00:09:31.576
That, the fish are there.
00:09:31.576 --> 00:09:38.817
So what has granted us a lot of success was when I first went up there with my dad, right, we didn't have a lot of money.
00:09:38.817 --> 00:09:40.317
We didn't even have a car.
00:09:40.317 --> 00:09:44.687
So what he did was, it's all about having the small hook.
00:09:44.687 --> 00:09:48.267
You got the fish, you know, if you've seen sunfish, their mouth is really tiny.
00:09:48.267 --> 00:09:51.136
I mean, it's like you can barely fit a pea in their mouth.
00:09:51.136 --> 00:09:54.437
So it was important to have a really small hook.
00:09:54.437 --> 00:10:05.567
So, we went to Dunham's over at Waterworks, got some really small hooks, I think they might have been like size 10 or 12, and a piece of string, and a stick, that's what we used.
00:10:05.567 --> 00:10:18.106
We'd go move the top layer of leaves and topsoil, catch a couple worms, put a little piece on the hook, and, if you've got the right, setup, It's like the magnet game, but with real fish.
00:10:18.106 --> 00:10:19.476
You're gonna pull 'em right out of the water.
00:10:19.476 --> 00:10:27.326
So I have an issue here where I live where somebody planted some bamboo, and I don't mean like, you know, the Japanese bamboo.
00:10:27.326 --> 00:10:29.736
I mean like the actual stalks of bamboo,
00:10:29.985 --> 00:10:31.554
Oh, yeah, that goes wild.
00:10:32.136 --> 00:10:35.586
Yeah, they've had to start cutting it down because it's like taken over the whole hillside.
00:10:35.934 --> 00:10:36.424
Mm-hmm.
00:10:36.476 --> 00:10:39.376
And I'm thinking what can I use these bamboo sticks for?
00:10:39.376 --> 00:10:40.495
And then it dawned on me.
00:10:41.075 --> 00:10:43.365
I saw that on your social media.
00:10:43.365 --> 00:10:44.544
I was wondering about that.
00:10:45.116 --> 00:10:45.836
Yeah, the fishstick.
00:10:45.904 --> 00:10:47.644
That, that's really cool.
00:10:48.037 --> 00:10:48.626
The catching stick.
00:10:48.626 --> 00:10:59.317
So started making those as a way to be able to catch the fish 'cause one of the issues that I had at previous programs are the kids, they're restless.
00:10:59.317 --> 00:11:05.307
They wanna cast them rods out, reel 'em in, cast them out, reel 'em in, cast them out, reel 'em in, and it's creates two problems.
00:11:05.307 --> 00:11:10.147
One, that's not conducive for catching fish if you're fishing for sunfish.
00:11:10.147 --> 00:11:18.326
Also, they do excellent job of tangling them up, so you spend a lot of time untangling and not a lot of time catching.
00:11:18.326 --> 00:11:22.596
So I was like, okay, I think I can solve two problems here with this.
00:11:22.596 --> 00:11:26.437
One, they're, they're low to no maintenance.
00:11:26.437 --> 00:11:27.996
You cannot tangle it.
00:11:27.996 --> 00:11:33.326
Even though some kids actually do tangle it, but I can only imagine what they'd have done with a real fishing if they can tangle these.
00:11:33.326 --> 00:11:43.037
So it was just a lot easier to just have them, you know, the setup, it was It also allowed me to start introducing fishing to much younger children.
00:11:43.037 --> 00:11:46.616
So like my daughter caught her first sunfish unassisted.
00:11:46.616 --> 00:11:51.647
She might not even have been two years old because it's you know, no maintenance.
00:11:51.647 --> 00:11:55.567
It's just hold a stick and just literally lift it in and out of the water.
00:11:55.567 --> 00:11:59.976
So that's how we have a lot of success are the fishing sticks, the fish sticks.
00:12:00.585 --> 00:12:00.945
Yeah. Right.
00:12:01.715 --> 00:12:02.754
I make them all myself.
00:12:02.754 --> 00:12:04.335
I cut down the bamboo.
00:12:04.335 --> 00:12:06.725
I make 'em in my garage.
00:12:06.725 --> 00:12:09.365
You know, I wrap 'em up in plastic, and we, we go.
00:12:09.453 --> 00:12:09.644
Yeah.
00:12:10.384 --> 00:12:10.764
It also allows me to give them out after the program.
00:12:10.974 --> 00:12:11.703
That's perfect.
00:12:11.754 --> 00:12:19.504
I see kids up there on weekdays, I'll stop up at the lake and they'll be fishing with one of the sticks I gave them.
00:12:20.027 --> 00:12:21.236
That's what I was gonna say.
00:12:21.236 --> 00:12:27.557
Even if that one broke or something, they could get right back into it pretty easily to recreate what you gave them.
00:12:27.813 --> 00:12:29.644
You won't even need the stick, to be honest.
00:12:29.644 --> 00:12:30.594
You could, like,
00:12:31.636 --> 00:12:31.746
Yeah.
00:12:31.793 --> 00:12:34.364
I think the first time we caught a bluegill, we didn't even use a stick.
00:12:34.364 --> 00:12:38.293
We literally just, flung the line out there, and my dad just ripped the fish right out of the water.
00:12:38.293 --> 00:12:38.663
I mean, I could not believe it.
00:12:38.807 --> 00:12:44.354
And he was not an angler, like full disclosure . He was not, like, a fishing guy. We didn't even have a rod.
00:12:48.947 --> 00:12:50.346
Just something to do that day.
00:12:50.417 --> 00:12:51.567
It was something to do.
00:12:52.147 --> 00:12:52.456
Yeah.
00:12:52.634 --> 00:12:53.683
Yeah, a lot of days.
00:12:53.683 --> 00:12:55.714
I had a brother, he was 11 months older than me.
00:12:55.714 --> 00:12:59.923
My dad was a single father, so single father, living in the city, not making a lot of money.
00:12:59.923 --> 00:13:05.933
Transportation was difficult, but we had to do something with our time.
00:13:05.933 --> 00:13:11.563
I grew up in East Liberty, and it was in the mid-'90s, early '90s, it was a lot different than the East Liberty you know today.
00:13:11.563 --> 00:13:15.244
So he was just trying to find something to do to keep us off the street, you know?
00:13:15.244 --> 00:13:18.009
And, it worked.
00:13:18.009 --> 00:13:19.740
It absolutely worked.
00:13:19.813 --> 00:13:25.384
He took you to the water and you came away different and doing something positive out of it.
00:13:25.384 --> 00:13:30.701
And it is really something that your dad wasn't a fisherman.
00:13:30.701 --> 00:13:32.881
He didn't come from a fishing family.
00:13:32.881 --> 00:13:38.912
He just decided to show up with what he had for his kids, and that's what we call agency.
00:13:38.912 --> 00:13:43.402
And we'd say that he owned it.
00:13:43.402 --> 00:13:50.562
He just grabbed a stick and a worm and made something happen for his kids, and it became your life's work.
00:13:50.562 --> 00:13:56.522
You said, some of those kids you see on the weekdays coming back to fishing.
00:13:56.522 --> 00:13:59.211
Was there someone who came to Fishburgh and walked away different?
00:14:01.631 --> 00:14:03.101
The, the crappie kid.
00:14:03.101 --> 00:14:04.662
So there was this kid, Cam.
00:14:04.662 --> 00:14:09.142
He came up when I was still volunteering at the original program.
00:14:09.142 --> 00:14:10.371
Him and his mom came up.
00:14:10.371 --> 00:14:10.816
He was a real shy kid.
00:14:10.865 --> 00:14:12.086
Yeah.
00:14:12.652 --> 00:14:13.692
Shy kid, you know what I mean?
00:14:13.692 --> 00:14:20.292
Soft-spoken, he was interested in fishing, but he was not one of those kids that was like super rambunctious, you know what I mean?
00:14:20.292 --> 00:14:22.022
Trying to catch fish, talking over top of you.
00:14:22.155 --> 00:14:22.655
Mm-hmm.
00:14:22.761 --> 00:14:24.532
He was shier, you know what I mean?
00:14:24.532 --> 00:14:35.812
His mom was a single mom, and I took him under my wing with the stick and he caught a Crappie. We don't have very many other kinds of fish in there besides bluegills, because we got a lot of poachers.
00:14:35.812 --> 00:14:40.302
I don't know if you know what a poacher is, but it's somebody who's taking fish that you're not supposed to take.
00:14:40.302 --> 00:14:41.331
It's a catch and release.
00:14:41.331 --> 00:14:52.642
We don't have many besides these sunfish, and this kid caught a crappie, and everybody then was like, "Oh my God," crowding around him to see this fish that looked different from all the other fish.
00:14:52.642 --> 00:14:54.231
So he became the
00:14:54.716 --> 00:14:56.635
He's like, "I'm the man."
00:14:56.741 --> 00:15:00.892
It's fun to say that, but we called him the crappie kid because he had caught a crappie, you know what I mean?
00:15:00.892 --> 00:15:01.841
And from that...
00:15:02.105 --> 00:15:02.826
That's great.
00:15:03.135 --> 00:15:04.836
He's never gonna forget that moment.
00:15:04.836 --> 00:15:09.155
That's gonna be a memory that he's talking about one day like you're talking about your childhood.
00:15:09.155 --> 00:15:13.046
In some ways, I wonder if it ever really is about the fish.
00:15:13.046 --> 00:15:16.895
What I heard in that story was a kid who left different than he arrived.
00:15:16.895 --> 00:15:20.096
It builds a belief about who you can be.
00:15:20.761 --> 00:15:21.422
Absolutely.
00:15:21.422 --> 00:15:25.351
And now he drives to take him fishing, like, all over the place.
00:15:25.351 --> 00:15:33.392
They live actually over by where the Western Penitentiary place is, and they go down there and they catch fish, and he's been coming back ever since, and he's really come out of his shell.
00:15:33.916 --> 00:15:35.285
Right.
00:15:35.392 --> 00:15:38.011
He's actually caught a couple other fish that were really unique.
00:15:38.011 --> 00:15:39.192
He caught a green sunfish.
00:15:39.192 --> 00:15:44.662
It was the only one I've ever seen caught out of there ever in my life, and I've been going there since 1994.
00:15:44.662 --> 00:15:47.422
I believe he caught an albino catfish.
00:15:48.101 --> 00:15:49.312
Oh.
00:15:49.369 --> 00:15:50.769
He's really a go-getter.
00:15:50.769 --> 00:15:51.408
He's been coming up ever since.
00:15:51.471 --> 00:15:51.841
Yeah.
00:15:52.099 --> 00:15:57.889
And he now comes to Fishburgh, and they go fishing and, he's not the same kid that he was when he showed up the first time.
00:15:57.889 --> 00:15:59.129
Now, he will talk to everybody and be like,
00:15:59.312 --> 00:16:00.182
That's so awesome.
00:16:00.236 --> 00:16:01.116
"This is how you do it.
00:16:01.116 --> 00:16:02.397
This is how you do it." You know what I mean?
00:16:02.397 --> 00:16:03.826
I'm like, "Okay, Cam, you're the expert.
00:16:03.990 --> 00:16:04.081
Yeah.
00:16:04.187 --> 00:16:13.147
So show me, show the other kids." Just recently at our first event of this year, there was another kid who was getting upset because he wasn't having a lot of success.
00:16:13.147 --> 00:16:14.346
He couldn't catch the fish.
00:16:14.346 --> 00:16:15.037
He was getting upset.
00:16:15.037 --> 00:16:16.226
He thought "These fish are stupid.
00:16:16.226 --> 00:16:24.777
These fish suck." And right before the program was over, I think like the last 15 minutes, he caught a crappie, and he's now the crappie kid.
00:16:26.311 --> 00:16:27.160
Oh, that's the one.
00:16:28.206 --> 00:16:31.197
"Yeah, Cam, you're not the crappie kid now." Now he will likely be,
00:16:31.567 --> 00:16:32.636
The new crappy kid.
00:16:33.653 --> 00:16:40.484
Yeah, they love when they catch a fish, and now all of a suddenly everybody's crowding around you and looking at you and this fish that you pulled out of the water.
00:16:40.484 --> 00:16:42.714
It's, really does a lot for their self-esteem.
00:16:42.714 --> 00:16:44.403
Builds confidence.
00:16:46.187 --> 00:16:47.917
Yeah, and also patience.
00:16:47.966 --> 00:16:51.567
And Phil, this has to do a lot for you as well, right?
00:16:51.567 --> 00:16:56.687
I'm sure that the feeling that you must get when you see the kids get there.
00:16:58.339 --> 00:16:58.428
Absolutely...
00:16:58.428 --> 00:17:02.038
So, like I said, I've caught a lot of trophy fish.
00:17:02.038 --> 00:17:02.629
You know what I mean?
00:17:02.629 --> 00:17:07.769
I've caught fish that, grown men dream about and, will maybe never catch ever.
00:17:07.769 --> 00:17:16.929
So I still love fishing, like I did when I was a little kid, but, the new challenge for me in life has been creating that for somebody else.
00:17:16.929 --> 00:17:17.479
You know what I mean?
00:17:17.479 --> 00:17:18.138
For someone else.
00:17:18.138 --> 00:17:19.028
Like, like, that,
00:17:19.116 --> 00:17:20.106
Giving.
00:17:20.159 --> 00:17:25.709
The big catch that is now the chase for me, being able to teach somebody else how to do this, you know what I mean?
00:17:25.709 --> 00:17:27.278
'Cause it's one thing for me to do it.
00:17:27.278 --> 00:17:29.229
I've been doing this for decades at this point.
00:17:29.467 --> 00:17:30.727
Yeah.
00:17:30.919 --> 00:17:37.088
For me to be good enough to teach somebody else who doesn't have any experience how to do that as well.
00:17:37.088 --> 00:17:38.229
So, that's now become the sport for me.
00:17:38.366 --> 00:17:38.807
Yeah.
00:17:38.909 --> 00:17:45.429
So, like, the 30-inch walleye or the 20-inch bass for me is now creating a new crappie kid.
00:17:46.778 --> 00:17:52.489
You can really change lives by connecting somebody to fishing.
00:17:53.618 --> 00:17:58.388
Believe me, I don't do it unless I believe that it was gonna make a difference in some kids' lives, for sure, 100%.
00:17:58.707 --> 00:18:00.987
In so many ways, for one thing, patience.
00:18:00.987 --> 00:18:09.487
We talk a lot about patience, on this show, and learning to wait and I think fishing is one of the few things left that actually does teach that.
00:18:09.487 --> 00:18:12.886
And you just gave an example of how you already see that in your work.
00:18:12.886 --> 00:18:19.166
Keeping them off the screens, you said you don't have to do anything for that because you're giving them success.
00:18:19.166 --> 00:18:26.037
They're feeling success with what you're doing and learning what it feels like to get joy from something like fishing.
00:18:26.037 --> 00:18:27.936
Jodi, did you grow up fishing?
00:18:29.817 --> 00:18:30.307
Yeah.
00:18:30.666 --> 00:18:31.696
Yeah, you did.
00:18:32.257 --> 00:18:32.727
Yeah. Didn't everybody?
00:18:32.747 --> 00:18:34.086
No, that's what I'm saying.
00:18:34.086 --> 00:18:35.777
So that's why I wanna speak to that,
00:18:35.857 --> 00:18:37.038
Especially in the city.
00:18:37.038 --> 00:18:38.218
Where did you grow up, Jodi?
00:18:39.032 --> 00:18:40.682
I started off in the north side and then we moved to Butler so I've had a lot of exposure especially fishing around the cricks.
00:18:40.710 --> 00:18:46.250
So in the city.
00:18:46.299 --> 00:18:49.859
My dad's whole family were real big on doing the fishing trips.
00:18:51.230 --> 00:18:52.710
Well, you've touched on another point.
00:18:52.710 --> 00:18:55.710
Your dad and your family, they were into the fishing.
00:18:55.710 --> 00:18:57.549
Imagine if your dad's not.
00:18:58.117 --> 00:18:59.397
Yeah.
00:18:59.609 --> 00:19:00.240
Imagine if your family's not into it.
00:19:00.452 --> 00:19:03.152
Something like that. Like, my dad, he was not an angler.
00:19:03.152 --> 00:19:04.811
He was not super into it.
00:19:04.811 --> 00:19:15.561
We just happened to live extremely close to this lake, and he had enough wherewithal to figure out how to catch these sunfish, and he made this happen for us just from nowhere.
00:19:15.561 --> 00:19:16.221
He just did it.
00:19:16.411 --> 00:19:17.090
Yeah.
00:19:17.412 --> 00:19:17.711
His dad didn't fish.
00:19:17.711 --> 00:19:18.912
You know what I mean?
00:19:18.912 --> 00:19:20.192
His brothers didn't fish.
00:19:20.192 --> 00:19:21.501
They, they didn't do it.
00:19:21.501 --> 00:19:22.852
And it was the biggest gift.
00:19:22.957 --> 00:19:23.787
You have thousands of kids in this city.
00:19:23.996 --> 00:19:24.105
Yeah.
00:19:24.217 --> 00:19:37.656
The city whose families and parents don't fish, and it's just not even something that crosses their mind, and we've got all these fantastic waterways here that are just, in my opinion, underutilized.
00:19:37.656 --> 00:19:46.987
There's still this misconception that all the waterways, it's like a post-industrial wasteland, which, granted, it was for a while, but that's not the case anymore.
00:19:46.987 --> 00:19:47.606
And,
00:19:47.675 --> 00:19:48.905
Right.
00:19:48.926 --> 00:19:53.106
A barrier or a deterrent for a lot of people to even wanna consider going fishing.
00:19:53.106 --> 00:19:54.517
I eat fish out of the river.
00:19:54.517 --> 00:19:58.747
When I tell people that, they look at me like my hair is on fire.
00:19:58.862 --> 00:20:00.451
Yeah.
00:20:00.563 --> 00:20:00.623
What?
00:20:00.623 --> 00:20:01.260
You can't eat fish out of the river.
00:20:01.260 --> 00:20:01.853
No, cause it-
00:20:01.964 --> 00:20:02.265
You can't do this.
00:20:02.265 --> 00:20:03.005
What?
00:20:03.005 --> 00:20:05.055
I'm like, dude, what are you talking about?
00:20:05.055 --> 00:20:11.305
I'm not eating them every single day, but how is this any worse than the Filet-O-Fish sandwich you got at McDonald's?
00:20:12.268 --> 00:20:13.178
Oh, yeah.
00:20:13.178 --> 00:20:14.238
You have an argument there.
00:20:15.255 --> 00:20:16.944
This isn't granddad's river.
00:20:16.944 --> 00:20:20.404
This is not your granddad's Allegheny anymore, I can tell you that.
00:20:20.404 --> 00:20:29.595
To catch a 20-inch smallmouth or a 30-inch walleye or a paddlefish or we even catch trout in the river sometimes.
00:20:29.595 --> 00:20:33.170
It would be unheard of 20 or 30 years ago.
00:20:33.170 --> 00:20:33.529
What?
00:20:34.143 --> 00:20:34.202
Yeah.
00:20:34.492 --> 00:20:34.563
Yeah.
00:20:34.563 --> 00:20:34.752
Yeah.
00:20:35.039 --> 00:20:37.782
All there were where catfish and carp, because they have a high tolerance for low oxygen and for more polluted water and lack of all of these other things that game fish and other fish need to not only live, but procreate and make more. I mean, we still have a way to go but like I said, it's not grandad's river. It's not the same anymore.
00:20:37.782 --> 00:20:43.962
And you can't love fishing and not love the Rivers. And the ecosystems that make it all possible.
00:20:58.470 --> 00:20:58.849
Not at all.
00:21:03.480 --> 00:21:04.309
That's, that 's the one.
00:21:08.339 --> 00:21:09.109
Exactly.
00:21:09.109 --> 00:21:10.480
You hit the nail on the head.
00:21:10.480 --> 00:21:12.692
How can you care about something you don't have any experience in or your not invested in?
00:21:12.742 --> 00:21:16.742
Yeah.
00:21:17.630 --> 00:21:28.200
Some environmentalists will look at Fishburgh with skepticism because they might correlate, fishing with, like, oh, you're hurting the fish or, you know, whatever the case may be.
00:21:28.200 --> 00:21:34.160
But in reality, a lot of the conservation efforts are funded directly by fishing.
00:21:34.160 --> 00:21:48.663
I don't know the name of the fund exactly, but a percentage of every single fishing equipment sale in the country, they have to send a portion of it to this fund that directly benefits waterway conservation.
00:21:48.794 --> 00:21:49.784
I think I've heard of that.
00:21:49.784 --> 00:21:57.763
I think it's been around for like 75 years, and I wanna say buying a fishing license does something like that too.
00:21:57.763 --> 00:22:01.054
I'll look it up to be sure, and I'll put it in the show notes.
00:22:01.054 --> 00:22:05.933
When you're developing that passion in somebody, you naturally become passionate in protecting.
00:22:06.651 --> 00:22:07.300
Without clean water, you can't have fish period.
00:22:09.144 --> 00:22:09.273
Mm-hmm.
00:22:09.330 --> 00:22:11.040
You know?
00:22:11.040 --> 00:22:11.951
It just won't happen.
00:22:11.951 --> 00:22:13.530
You can't have one without the other.
00:22:13.530 --> 00:22:18.730
That was one of the main points as to why Fishburgh is different than a lot of the other organizations.
00:22:18.730 --> 00:22:23.080
Not to, throw shade on any of them, but, we are very environmentally conscious.
00:22:23.080 --> 00:22:26.840
We are very, proper fish handling conscious, because you can't have one without the other.
00:22:26.884 --> 00:22:28.104
Right.
00:22:28.280 --> 00:22:36.830
So I'm now trying to create vested interest in these kids to protect these waterways as they grow up.
00:22:36.830 --> 00:22:43.851
You can't have fish without clean waterways, and you can't care about something that you don't really know about or have experience in.
00:22:43.851 --> 00:22:50.520
So introducing them to these waterways is basically introducing them to conservation and becoming a steward.
00:22:52.328 --> 00:22:54.739
And that's another part of taking care of community.
00:22:54.739 --> 00:22:59.416
You said, though, not everyone is a fishing advocate.
00:22:59.416 --> 00:23:02.886
So it's good to have your voice out there doing this work.
00:23:05.257 --> 00:23:06.646
To somebody listening what would you want them to know about this?
00:23:08.489 --> 00:23:09.969
I'd want them to go out there and go for it.
00:23:09.969 --> 00:23:11.419
I want them to give it a try.
00:23:11.419 --> 00:23:15.868
Go out there, and even if you're not gonna fish, spend some time on the water.
00:23:15.868 --> 00:23:16.919
Get out of the house.
00:23:16.919 --> 00:23:17.969
Get off the screen.
00:23:17.969 --> 00:23:18.759
Try.
00:23:18.759 --> 00:23:23.989
Like my dad, you don't have to be some avid angler or come from a long line of fishermen, you know what I mean?
00:23:23.989 --> 00:23:26.528
You just gotta have the interest and wanna do it.
00:23:26.528 --> 00:23:26.848
Yeah.
00:23:26.848 --> 00:23:33.648
I'm gonna be adding some, non-fishing programming for my, I like to call them, does it hurt to fish people.
00:23:33.648 --> 00:23:40.848
'Cause, you know, granted, it's probably not the greatest day of this fish's life, but we take a lot of pride in handling them correctly.
00:23:40.848 --> 00:23:41.439
You know what I mean?
00:23:41.439 --> 00:23:43.509
Not leaving them out of the water too long.
00:23:43.509 --> 00:23:45.278
Not using the wrong hooks.
00:23:45.278 --> 00:23:47.179
Not laying them down on the concrete.
00:23:47.179 --> 00:23:52.009
So, I do a lot of stuff to take as much care as I can because they are living beings, too.
00:23:52.009 --> 00:23:54.798
You're teaching fishing responsibly, so, which is important.
00:23:54.855 --> 00:23:56.895
Yeah. I try.
00:23:56.895 --> 00:23:57.615
Yeah, of course.
00:23:57.615 --> 00:24:04.346
So I , And I've noticed, fishing has become extremely popular, a lot more than it was before.
00:24:04.346 --> 00:24:09.105
After COVID, I guess people were looking for hobbies, and I've seen an increase in the amount of litter, and just balled up line in the fishing area.
00:24:14.028 --> 00:24:14.778
Oh, yeah.
00:24:15.006 --> 00:24:27.945
So like, the last thing that I wanna do is introduce thousands of kids to fishing only for them to start littering and start mistreating the area and all that other stuff.
00:24:27.945 --> 00:24:45.496
So before every Fishburgh program starts, I spend like 30 minutes cleaning up any garbage around the lake, and when it's over and everybody's left, I do the same thing because my biggest fear is for some of the kids or families that we introduce to this to leave some litter up there because now it's being counterproductive.
00:24:45.496 --> 00:24:54.405
I've introduced people to fishing, but I've also now introduced a lot of poor behavior and littering to the environment as well.
00:24:54.405 --> 00:24:56.715
At that point I would've rather they didn't fish at all.
00:24:58.183 --> 00:25:06.874
I'm sure you're making that part of the experience trying to be proactive about it and making that connection between the joy they're getting from the environment.
00:25:06.874 --> 00:25:08.284
And to take care of it.
00:25:10.269 --> 00:25:11.489
And to have personal responsibility.
00:25:13.115 --> 00:25:13.905
Absolutely.
00:25:13.905 --> 00:25:14.935
Yeah, you gotta care.
00:25:14.935 --> 00:25:16.155
It's one thing I've noticed.
00:25:16.155 --> 00:25:29.885
I, I used to get I still get really upset when I see the people littering, but I don't take it as personal anymore because what I understand is a lot of them didn't have somebody growing up who put an emphasis on this.
00:25:29.885 --> 00:25:35.044
You You're doing the same stuff your fathers do, and your father's doing the same thing his father did.
00:25:35.044 --> 00:25:46.173
So, as opposed to going out here and trying to fistfight everybody I think what can I do to lessen this in the future?"
00:25:47.573 --> 00:25:47.992
Sure.
00:25:48.153 --> 00:25:49.794
So what I do is look back in time.
00:25:49.794 --> 00:26:03.874
So we'll look at right now as the past, because I'm introducting these kids to how to do this the proper way and to not litter, and picking up other people's litter so that, you know, 20 years from now they're not littering and they're picking up other people's litter.
00:26:03.874 --> 00:26:05.628
And it'll have a butterfly effect.
00:26:07.202 --> 00:26:07.643
Right.
00:26:08.643 --> 00:26:08.813
It will.
00:26:08.843 --> 00:26:09.262
Yep.
00:26:10.063 --> 00:26:23.972
I used to get really mad because my dad kept garbage bags in the car, and if we were out somewhere and there was a lot of litter, like we'd go through Riverview Park, if he saw litter, he pulled the car over and we all had to get out and pick it up and put it in a trash bag.
00:26:23.972 --> 00:26:27.103
And as a kid, it was really annoying, but I'm still like this as an adult. And so are my kids.
00:26:27.259 --> 00:26:27.568
Yeah.
00:26:29.816 --> 00:26:30.435
Yeah, it's important.
00:26:30.435 --> 00:26:31.155
I do the same thing.
00:26:31.155 --> 00:26:32.006
I keep trash bags.
00:26:32.006 --> 00:26:42.506
I clean up litter like the first 15 or last 15 minutes of every single time I go fishing, and it's kinda sickening because I go every single day.
00:26:42.506 --> 00:26:53.175
Some spots I might go two days in a row or every couple days, and I'll pick up every last piece of trash, and lo and behold, the next morning, of garbage again.
00:26:53.175 --> 00:26:54.955
So it's not getting washed up.
00:26:54.955 --> 00:26:56.945
It's not like getting the wind blown there.
00:26:56.945 --> 00:26:57.715
It's people...
00:26:57.715 --> 00:27:03.455
And, and it kinda hurts me because these are not people that decided to come down the river and litter.
00:27:03.455 --> 00:27:16.665
These are people who call themselves fishermen. You know what I mean? And it's not just fishing line, it's the empty wrapper packets, it's the gas station food, it's Red Bulls, it's beer.
00:27:16.665 --> 00:27:21.046
It's people who came down here to go fishing who left all of this, you know?
00:27:21.046 --> 00:27:21.526
So
00:27:21.714 --> 00:27:22.144
Right.
00:27:22.316 --> 00:27:50.246
So, again, I'm trying to instill that in the kids who I'm trying to introduce to fishing this is not acceptable, and we've gotta, change the narrative, because another reason the other environmental groups kind of, I feel, would look at me sideways, is because of the reputation that anglers have due to a small percentage of folks. The majority of it's, it's 10 percent of the anglers account for 100% of the litter. It's insane.
00:27:50.545 --> 00:27:54.144
Right, but then everyone gets grouped in as the problem.
00:27:54.144 --> 00:27:57.154
So Dad put a garbage bag in the car.
00:27:57.154 --> 00:28:02.785
Now you put a garbage bag in the car, and somewhere out there, Cam is gonna put a garbage bag in his car.
00:28:02.785 --> 00:28:04.724
And that's how it gets passed forward.
00:28:04.724 --> 00:28:07.444
One person deciding to show up differently.
00:28:07.444 --> 00:28:17.164
And that becomes part of your mentorship, as you do each event, which we didn't say yet that you hold monthly events on the last Saturday, of every month through September.
00:28:17.556 --> 00:28:28.226
Yeah, I'll be doing them all the way through September, and I have a back to school event that'll happen in the end of August.
00:28:28.256 --> 00:28:30.036
Are you doing all of this yourself?
00:28:30.498 --> 00:28:37.508
I have a team of people that come up to help volunteer at the events, but aside from that, I do it all myself.
00:28:37.508 --> 00:28:38.105
Yeah.
00:28:38.743 --> 00:28:39.124
Yeah.
00:28:39.223 --> 00:28:40.104
Yeah, I do a lot.
00:28:41.182 --> 00:28:45.843
Where can we direct people if they want to help whether it's volunteer or?
00:28:46.153 --> 00:28:47.472
Fishburgh.com.
00:28:47.472 --> 00:28:52.782
Just like Pittsburgh, but with the word fish in it.
00:28:52.782 --> 00:28:56.333
As soon as you go to the website, there's three buttons at the top.
00:28:56.333 --> 00:29:02.722
One is join our team, which is if you wanna become a volunteer or help out with some of the other stuff behind scenes.
00:29:02.722 --> 00:29:06.383
You got sign up for the events, and the third one is the catch form.
00:29:06.383 --> 00:29:11.452
So if you caught a fish and you wanna share the picture or some information, you can supply it there.
00:29:11.452 --> 00:29:18.063
But one thing I want people to know, you don't have to be an angler in order to help Fishburgh out.
00:29:18.063 --> 00:29:20.022
I got the fishing part sewed up.
00:29:20.022 --> 00:29:20.742
We're good there.
00:29:20.742 --> 00:29:24.113
What I need is more people to help me with the ancillary stuff.
00:29:24.113 --> 00:29:26.403
Like, I, built the website myself.
00:29:26.403 --> 00:29:28.383
I do all of the marketing myself.
00:29:28.383 --> 00:29:32.913
I do all of the forms myself, all of the appearances, podcasts.
00:29:32.913 --> 00:29:37.323
I'm doing all of it, and I got a full-time job, got a wife, and I got a toddler.
00:29:38.452 --> 00:29:42.232
So like...And I fish all the time, so I am taxed.
00:29:42.232 --> 00:29:45.542
I sleep five hours a night max.
00:29:45.842 --> 00:29:46.561
Oh, boy.
00:29:46.811 --> 00:29:51.882
So, when you started this, 'cause this is a massive undertaking, you had to have been a little bit afraid.
00:29:51.882 --> 00:29:54.932
Did you at any moment think, "I'm not doing this.
00:29:54.932 --> 00:29:55.991
I gotta be out of my mind"?
00:29:57.239 --> 00:30:02.439
There have been times where I wanted to stop doing it, you know what I mean?
00:30:02.439 --> 00:30:03.719
Because it was a lot of work.
00:30:03.719 --> 00:30:05.278
I wasn't getting a lot of support.
00:30:05.278 --> 00:30:09.249
But this is what I do, I consistently bite off more than I can chew.
00:30:09.249 --> 00:30:13.588
But, this is how I operate, and I don't know any other way.
00:30:13.588 --> 00:30:14.398
I really don't.
00:30:14.398 --> 00:30:23.179
It's difficult because I feel like sometimes I care about people more than they care about themselves, I won't give up.
00:30:23.179 --> 00:30:26.288
I'll give up on myself, but I won't give up on other people.
00:30:27.679 --> 00:30:30.269
And I think that's the part that doesn't always get talked about.
00:30:30.269 --> 00:30:44.959
It's imperfect and those moments of doubt and then just deciding that the people counting on you are worth staying in it for, and that's resilience living inside of thriving.
00:30:44.959 --> 00:30:50.009
And I think you're showing that you don't have to have it all figured out to be doing both.
00:30:51.917 --> 00:30:59.837
It's a very selfless program. If I were to quit, I'm not quitting on myself, I'd be quitting on kids, and the program, and the environment, and everything else.
00:30:59.837 --> 00:31:00.728
So that's kinda what keeps me going.
00:31:00.840 --> 00:31:08.641
And that connects to, what we talk about using the word thriving in our podcast.
00:31:08.641 --> 00:31:18.020
And what we mean by that is that it doesn't mean that everything's perfect, and it means staying steady through those hard seasons and growing through the hard stuff.
00:31:18.020 --> 00:31:26.471
And when I listen to you talk about what Fishburgh does, I hear a form of thriving everywhere.
00:31:26.471 --> 00:31:27.681
It's layered in there.
00:31:27.681 --> 00:31:29.371
Do you see it that way?
00:31:32.192 --> 00:31:34.982
It's difficult because I'm a perfectionist.
00:31:34.982 --> 00:31:42.053
Not to say that I do anything perfect, because I don't think I've ever done anything perfect in my life besides, marry my wife and have my daughter.
00:31:42.053 --> 00:31:47.573
But people tell me that it's going good, but I always feel like I could be doing so much more.
00:31:47.573 --> 00:31:53.883
I feel like there's just so many areas that I can improve in, but I try not to beat myself up about it too much.
00:31:53.883 --> 00:32:01.173
yeah, I guess you could say I would be thriving because, I mean, we serve hundreds, if not a thousand kids a year.
00:32:01.300 --> 00:32:01.570
Yeah.
00:32:01.762 --> 00:32:05.232
I think first event was April 25th.
00:32:05.232 --> 00:32:07.413
It was the draft day weekend.
00:32:07.413 --> 00:32:11.942
It was the last day of the draft, so they were already telling people, "Don't come into town.
00:32:11.942 --> 00:32:17.015
Avoid comeing down here were like, "I'm kinda going away that weekend.
00:32:17.015 --> 00:32:18.644
I don't wanna be in town," this and that.
00:32:18.644 --> 00:32:26.005
It was April, which most programs aren't starting until May because the weather here can be so unpredictable.
00:32:26.005 --> 00:32:34.704
I had to take the registration link down a week early because we had over 400 people register.
00:32:35.519 --> 00:32:36.138
What?
00:32:36.244 --> 00:32:45.404
Yeah, and then I was getting anxiety about it, 'cause like I said, I got only so many volunteers, and even the ones we have I'm not a giant organization with a bunch of people or a, or a budget or anything.
00:32:45.489 --> 00:32:47.979
Yeah, but what does that say about the need?
00:32:49.615 --> 00:32:50.134
Exactly.
00:32:50.134 --> 00:32:53.015
I'm making these rods in my kitchen myself, you know what I mean?
00:32:53.015 --> 00:32:53.924
I'll send you videos.
00:32:53.924 --> 00:32:56.065
I made a social media post trying to get volunteers.
00:32:56.065 --> 00:33:01.214
It's literally a video of me making the bamboo rods in my dining room, I think, at that point.
00:33:01.214 --> 00:33:06.575
And so I had to take the registration link down a week early, and you know what happened?
00:33:06.575 --> 00:33:12.565
People then started calling and emailing me because they couldn't find that date on the registration link.
00:33:12.565 --> 00:33:13.615
All right?
00:33:14.368 --> 00:33:17.128
Oh, see, now that should tell you everything you need to know.
00:33:18.494 --> 00:33:19.815
Fast-forward to April 25th.
00:33:19.815 --> 00:33:22.825
It was, like, 50 degrees and raining.
00:33:22.825 --> 00:33:27.934
It was cold, rainy, wet day, and I think we still had over 200 people show up.
00:33:27.934 --> 00:33:28.404
So
00:33:29.669 --> 00:33:30.278
Wow.
00:33:30.278 --> 00:33:31.409
Wow.
00:33:31.409 --> 00:33:32.788
That's amazing.
00:33:32.108 --> 00:33:34.724
So you tell me- You tell me if it's thriving.
00:33:36.939 --> 00:33:38.398
That's it.
00:33:39.035 --> 00:33:40.345
It's sometimes thriving a little bit more than I have the capacity for, to be honest with you.
00:33:40.358 --> 00:33:40.679
Yeah.
00:33:41.025 --> 00:33:43.278
Yeah.
00:33:43.278 --> 00:33:44.388
Yeah.
00:33:44.525 --> 00:33:45.744
People wanna help out.
00:33:45.744 --> 00:33:53.125
I have people that wanna donate, and I'm like, "The only thing I need you to donate is your time." Because that's ultimately where it comes to.
00:33:53.125 --> 00:33:59.964
I don't want to provide a poor experience for the families because we're just taxed, we're just overextended.
00:33:59.964 --> 00:34:03.125
So, what I really ultimately need more than money is I need people.
00:34:04.989 --> 00:34:07.019
So that just goes through your volunteer link.
00:34:07.019 --> 00:34:10.778
Sign up that way, and then you let us know what the needs are.
00:34:11.655 --> 00:34:14.755
Yeah, join the team, and, I reach out to everybody personally.
00:34:14.755 --> 00:34:18.565
I call them or email them, whichever box they check for their preferred contact.
00:34:18.565 --> 00:34:19.784
And, fishing is great.
00:34:19.784 --> 00:34:24.945
If you're a fisherman, you wanna come up and, you know, fish and bait hooks and teach the kids, fantastic.
00:34:24.945 --> 00:34:28.505
What I need is the help outside of that, you know what I mean?
00:34:28.505 --> 00:34:43.155
Is the help with the website, and the graphics design, and making the bamboo rods, and doing maintenance on the rods, and transportation, and I get to go to festivals and set up tables and stuff like that all the time.
00:34:43.155 --> 00:34:44.914
But at the end of the day,
00:34:45.068 --> 00:34:47.228
You don't have the time or the people to do it.
00:34:47.275 --> 00:34:47.445
The time.
00:34:47.445 --> 00:34:48.175
Yeah, exactly.
00:34:48.175 --> 00:34:56.385
My wife has been extremely supportive, but, I also don't wanna abandon my family because I'm busy taking care of everybody else.
00:34:56.385 --> 00:34:58.168
So my daughter comes, my wife and daughter come to the event.
00:34:58.219 --> 00:34:59.429
Yeah, that's important.
00:34:59.565 --> 00:35:06.255
I also don't wanna overextend them on my journey because while she's supportive, this is my cross to bear.
00:35:06.255 --> 00:35:09.297
Make sure you take care of yourself while you're taking care of others.
00:35:09.297 --> 00:35:13.336
In the off-season, like after September, do you take a break?
00:35:13.336 --> 00:35:17.007
Do you give yourself some time to breathe?
00:35:17.672 --> 00:35:21.222
I fish over 300 days a year, so that's when I just start doing more fishing.
00:35:21.222 --> 00:35:24.682
There's not really much to do the off-season.
00:35:24.682 --> 00:35:29.032
There will be this year because I'm gonna be working on a lot more non-fishing type stuff.
00:35:29.032 --> 00:35:31.233
I wanna get some environmental classes together.
00:35:31.233 --> 00:35:46.233
So I'm gonna partner with the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission's Biology Department on that to try to do some hands-on stuff where maybe we get some wildlife in the Frick Environmental Center or the Pittsburgh Zoo and start doing some of the educational programming, not just fishing.
00:35:46.233 --> 00:35:46.452
Yeah.
00:35:46.452 --> 00:35:51.496
There's always a couple kids, usually the older kids, who are just really into it.
00:35:51.496 --> 00:35:55.467
So the fall is, like, arguably the best time of year to go fishing.
00:35:55.467 --> 00:36:00.447
I usually do some one-on-one and some, like, fishing excursions with them for the most part.
00:36:00.447 --> 00:36:09.356
So that's what I do, is we'll, stop doing the ones at the lake because the sunfish kind of shut down, but then the big trophy fish down the river really start to get...
00:36:09.356 --> 00:36:18.659
I start taking some of those kids out one-on-ones and really showing them, "This is is what's in store for you if you decide to stick with this."
00:36:20.242 --> 00:36:31.322
To extend the mentorship piece a little bit, they may actually find it rewarding to help you doing some of the things that you're doing in the background, like making the rods and things like that.
00:36:31.322 --> 00:36:36.193
Did you ever think of trying to extend your mentorship in that way maybe?
00:36:36.193 --> 00:36:38.103
You know, it gives them more purpose.
00:36:38.880 --> 00:36:42.289
The problem is I have no shortage of ideas.
00:36:42.289 --> 00:36:45.420
What I have a shortage of is time and energy for execution.
00:36:45.420 --> 00:36:57.309
So I want to do all of that stuff, but then it's again, it's the planning part is what I'm in need of, it's, like, making sure we're compliant, and, finding places to do this, and getting equipment, and then calling people, and making sure the parents are signing waivers.
00:36:57.309 --> 00:36:58.670
That stuff is a lot of work.
00:36:58.670 --> 00:36:59.730
I've ran and owned for profit businesses.
00:37:00.829 --> 00:37:08.940
This is infinitely more difficult, there's no money being made. I fund most of this out of my paycheck.
00:37:10.552 --> 00:37:11.632
Yeah, I know.
00:37:11.632 --> 00:37:14.833
Which is why we were glad to have some help for this one.
00:37:14.833 --> 00:37:17.378
We did get a sponsor for this episode.
00:37:17.378 --> 00:37:25.168
A representative from National Tank and Equipment is making a donation to Fishburgh so I'll forward that onto you after this.
00:37:25.168 --> 00:37:26.307
But I wanted to mention that.
00:37:26.677 --> 00:37:28.887
Whatever you need it for to support the program.
00:37:29.797 --> 00:37:30.717
Yeah, it goes a long way.
00:37:31.315 --> 00:37:33.594
Well, we're happy to have had you on today.
00:37:33.594 --> 00:37:35.025
I really believe in what you're doing.
00:37:35.275 --> 00:37:39.085
Get the word out and connect the dots, and, you know, tell people to go to the website and sign up.
00:37:39.085 --> 00:37:43.574
And They can always email me, phil@fishburgh.com if they got any questions or anything.
00:37:43.574 --> 00:37:46.545
I'm still a relatively small organization.
00:37:46.545 --> 00:37:51.894
I answer personally every single phone call, email, text message, Facebook message.
00:37:51.943 --> 00:37:52.134
Ah.
00:37:52.315 --> 00:37:56.184
If they really want to see what's going on, Fishburgh Outdoors, just go to our Facebook page.
00:37:56.184 --> 00:38:03.414
That's where I put the most recent content from the events, and the videos, and reels, and stuff is pretty much all on there.
00:38:03.414 --> 00:38:04.304
Yeah.
00:38:05.134 --> 00:38:06.693
That will be in the show notes too.
00:38:07.000 --> 00:38:10.710
The website's more for signing up and just general inquiries and joining the team.
00:38:10.710 --> 00:38:18.190
I haven't really had much time to update that with the photos and videos because It's just way harder than to update social media to be honest with you.
00:38:18.190 --> 00:38:26.489
But yeah, if there's anybody out there who, like, does web design or graphics design or any of that stuff, and you wanna start helping me with the website, by all means.
00:38:26.489 --> 00:38:27.619
You don't have to be a fisherman.
00:38:27.619 --> 00:38:28.829
I know exactly what we need.
00:38:28.829 --> 00:38:31.329
I just don't have the capacity to do it all to be honest.
00:38:32.628 --> 00:38:36.028
Thank you for taking the time to talk with us tonight.
00:38:36.028 --> 00:38:39.009
For this season, we wanted to close every episode the same way.
00:38:39.009 --> 00:38:47.418
The show is called This Is It, and it's about the moment that you stop waiting for your life to start and you realize this is it.
00:38:47.418 --> 00:38:49.318
Have you had that moment?
00:38:49.389 --> 00:38:52.338
I'm working on a proposal called Beyond the Pond, right?
00:38:52.338 --> 00:38:58.929
Because the pond is great, but unfortunately the kids, they age out of the sunfish at one point.
00:38:58.929 --> 00:39:09.719
So we have our first Bridge City Bass Club, which will be the second stage of the program, I think that will absolutely be it, and that's gonna probably take place in June, hopefully.
00:39:11.266 --> 00:39:11.967
That's awesome.
00:39:11.967 --> 00:39:15.726
So you're turning potholes to purpose, and the city's lucky to have you.
00:39:15.726 --> 00:39:16.887
So thank you for being here.
00:39:18.179 --> 00:39:19.940
Thanks for having me.
00:39:20.217 --> 00:39:20.467
Yep.
00:39:20.853 --> 00:39:21.373
Thank you.
00:39:22.947 --> 00:39:30.407
We started this episode talking about the healthy thing you reach for when life gets heavy, the thing that makes you feel calm and lit up at the same time.
00:39:30.407 --> 00:39:37.036
Phil found his at the edge of a pond, and he's spending his life making sure that other people get to feel it too.
00:39:37.036 --> 00:39:42.858
One of our listeners, a Yinzer on her own journey, said it best, about fishing.
00:39:42.858 --> 00:39:46.039
Escape the chaos and intensity of life.
00:39:46.039 --> 00:40:04.983
I'm able to concentrate on one thing which allows me to enjoy the reminder we don't always see, and there's so much beauty in nature." Whatever yours looks like, fishing, organizing, aggressively tending your garden, music, being there for somebody, go find it.
00:40:04.983 --> 00:40:06.153
This is it.
00:40:06.153 --> 00:40:20.456
Hey, since you stuck around, here's something worth knowing.
00:40:20.456 --> 00:40:24.976
Phil mentioned earlier that part of every fishing equipment sale goes towards conservation.
00:40:24.976 --> 00:40:27.536
So we dug in, and he was right, and then some.
00:40:27.536 --> 00:40:31.706
It's called the Dingell-Johnson Act, and it's been running since 1950.
00:40:31.706 --> 00:40:40.106
And we also found 100% of every fishing license sold in this country goes entirely to conservation too, by law, every dollar.
00:40:40.106 --> 00:40:43.806
Anglers have been taking care of the waterways long before it was a conversation.
00:40:43.806 --> 00:40:46.047
Head to our show notes for more on this.