Ep. 143 | Mississippi Mike: Cats, Clams and Commercial Fishing

Vortex Nation Podcast

Sports, Vortex Optics, Shooting, Scope, Gun, Long Range, Wilderness, Hunting, Riflescope, Vortex, Vortex Nation Podcast, Binoculars, Vortex Nation, Optics, Rifle

4.9 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 31 August 2020

⏱️ 68 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Mike Valley, owner and operator of Valley Fish and Cheese in Prairie Du Chen, WI, took Mark and Jimmy under his wing for a peek into the life and history of a commercial fisherman on the Mississippi River. Our initial plan was to discuss mostly just fishing for catfish with Mike, as that seems to be his true passion and specialty, but through time spent on the river and hours processing fish by hand, we heard enough stories about growing up on the river in a commercial fishing family we knew it had to be its own episode. Mike discusses the rise and fall of commercial fishing on the river, clamming for the button and imitation pearl industry, and why fish like sheep head and red horse sucker which most people see as “Trash fish” can be some of the most delicious treats you’ve ever tried. He even goes into a near-death experience he once had 40 feet under the water’s surface that will surely make any claustrophobic listeners out there cringe! As always, we want to hear your feedback! Let us know if there are any topics you'd like covered on the Vortex Nation podcast by asking us on Instagram @vortexnationpodcast

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to the Vortex Nation podcast brought to you by lovers of hunting, shooting, public lands, the Second Amendment and Good Food. All right, what is up everybody?
0:20.0	We are sitting down with quite possibly the most interesting man on the Mississippi.
0:27.3	We got Mr. Mike Valley across from us.
0:30.2	If you could look around, you would think, well these guys are going to do a
0:34.0	podcast on hand-carved decoys hand-painted decoys might be a separate podcast could
0:40.2	be honestly at some point in time but not the case we were lucky enough to
0:44.3	spend a couple days with Mike about a month ago actually so we're back up here in
0:50.8	in prairie we're in in the state of Wisconsin.
0:54.3	And we did some commercial cat fishing.
0:58.0	Mike was kind enough to show us the ropes a little bit.
1:00.4	And we got a little bit of a window
1:02.0	into the commercial fishing industry I guess you might want to call
1:07.1	it on the Mississippi here and then we also did a day of sport fishing but Mike's got a shop up here in Prairie Mike just so I don't
1:15.7	butcher the full name of the shop what's the shop that you have here it's valley
1:19.2	fish and cheese valley fish and she's how it's labeled sure and and I guess before I keep rambling on, Mike, maybe introduce yourself and tell us a little
1:28.6	bit about what you have going on here and we'll kind of jump into, you know know essentially your history and the history of the region if we can and all the really super interesting stuff that that surrounds it around here.
1:39.7	Yeah there is a lot of interesting on a daily basis.
1:43.8	My name is Mike Valley, fourth generation
1:46.6	commercial fishermen passed down through our family.
1:50.2	We run Valley Fish and Cheese here.
1:52.8	Been in this location since 1983.
1:55.8	Our daily life consists of catching, cleaning, smoking,
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Vortex Nation Podcast, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Vortex Nation Podcast and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.