#031 Part 1: From Flyrods to Float Planes - Dr. Bob Ledda

In the first return guest episode of the podcast, this conversation with Dr. Bob Ledda, we dive deeper into the worlds of health, wilderness, and the mindset that connects them. What starts with a powerful story about helping his son navigate Type 1 diabetes without insulin quickly opens into a broader discussion about lifestyle medicine, metabolic health, and the gap between conventional healthcare and proactive wellness.

From there, the conversation shifts into the outdoors—where Dr. Bob believes some of the most important ingredients for long-term health already exist. Hunting, fishing, exposure to the elements, and moving through wild places aren’t just hobbies—they’re a blueprint for longevity. 

Dr. Bob shares the early experiences that shaped him: catching his first fish, hunting as a kid, and learning the rhythms of nature long before he ever practiced medicine. Those formative moments eventually led him to Alaska, where one flight in a bush plane changed the trajectory of his life and sparked a passion for aviation that still defines his work today.

Along the way, we explore:

• The connection between outdoor living and longevity
• Why hunting and fishing tap into something deeply human
• The moment Dr. Bob knew Alaska would become home
• How aviation opened the door to building a life in the backcountry
• Early lessons, mistakes, and hard-earned wisdom from decades of flying in Alaska

This episode is about more than adventure. It’s about how health, purpose, and the wild places of Alaska can shape a life—and why reconnecting with those things might be more important than ever.

Stay Tuned for Part 2, where we dive into Dr. Bob's updates in the health world. 

Visit https://www.allalaska.com/ to learn more about Dr. Bob's lodge.

Checkout his new tv show on the Outdoor Channel

Follow on Facebook 

Transcript

We didn't even really talk about the outdoor stuff at all last time. We mentioned it. We said, you know, we have, there's this whole other world that Dr. Bob's a part of and maybe at another time we'll go over that. And so this is kind of what I wanted to do with our time together is focus on that in the beginning. then, then just, have to talk about, yeah, we have talk mean, you've got a kid that's got type one diabetes and I haven't had to give him insulin in eight months and it's a life changer for all of us. I will say,

that if there is a new onset type one diabetic child in the community, my advice and my wife's advice is free. I mean, like reach out. if it's new onset, because you've got this window of opportunity to limit insulin needs early on while the pancreas is trying to recover. And we want to maximize that possibility because my hypothesis is.

that has a lot to do with whether or not you could go into remission or prolong the honeymoon phase or whatever you want to call it. But the honeymoon phase isn't normally, yeah, you just don't need insulin anymore. The reason he's having that success is his willingness to eat a disciplined diet and associate movement with carbohydrate intake. My wife's willingness to produce

good food taste-wise that fits the low glycemic picture but tastes like high glycemic food. And my understanding of metabolic health, which by the way is better than the people's down at ⁓ Seattle Children's Hospital endocrinology. mean, they knew stuff I didn't know. I'm grateful for their expertise and what they taught me. They didn't wanna learn from me.

and they don't know what I know. And that's unfortunate. I think that's going to be really good to touch on because you mentioned it in that first episode. You mentioned that, which was fairly new for Brett, but we didn't come back to that. ⁓ We talked about the lifestyle prescription, so I think it'd be a really cool application to kind of give a little bit of the background on that story and then what you found over the last eight months. ⁓ Or did you say eight months it's been? April was the last time he had insulin. ⁓

So he went from severe type 1 diabetes with DKA and an A1C of 14 at four months. He had an A1C of 5.7. Now he was just coming off of insulin about that time. And it's all because of lifestyle prescription, which I'm an expert in. ⁓

and, but I'm not evidence-based. No, I'm a freaking idiot that's getting lucky. Wrong. I got a ton of evidence that the docs who claim the integrative doctors don't practice evidence-based medicine, they're just evidence oblivious. They don't know the evidence that I know, just like I don't read every piece of evidence that they have to deal with to manage their craft. And neither one of us are evil. They just have a recipe for learn how to diagnose.

Here's the pharmaceutical intervention for that diagnosis. I have a recipe of understand risks for chronic disease. Here's the lifestyle prescription recipe for not needing their recipes. Okay? I mean, that's, that's, and, and, let's not disparage each other. They're doing a good job because 50 % of people ain't going to change the way they live. And the only tool they're going to have in their toolbox.

is the pill that person calls in. But there's probably some people out there that would like to have insight into what I understand. I know, I guarantee that. I think it's really cool that you are saying, if this is what you got going on, free advice, hit me up. That's strictly for new onset. For new onset type 1. Because that's God telling me, got take care. The impact that our current situation has had on

the health of the whole family is such that I have got to share that if there's another person who we could extend that impact to if there's parents that are willing to deal with the work on their end and the kid is reasonably compliant with the strategy. Totally. You know. some buy-in. Yeah.

⁓ Bob, I'm so glad you're back. I was just telling you this, you were here for episode 001.

And I felt it was quite an honor. Gave me a chance to give this a shot and see if this whole podcast thing would work out. now we're sitting by the time this comes out episode 31 and hasn't even been a year yet. I launched this March 30th, March 31st of last year. So, ⁓ really cool to have you back. And I knew you were going to be the first repeat guests because there is so much we didn't talk about last time with all Alaska outdoors

You have this whole other expertise. mean, you're an amazing doctor. You know the ins and outs of discovering true health and wellness and leading other people into that. But then you have this whole other thing that you do with the outdoors where you're, kind of, there's a whole lot of similarities. The more I thought about it, there is a lot of crossover in that with ⁓ kind of leading people on this journey to discover some pretty amazing things, whether that was health or whether that's what Alaska has to offer. So very privileged to have you back again.

and to kind of dive into that. Because a lot of people, know from this last time we talked, one, a lot of people came out of the woodwork to say, Dr. Bob's amazing. ⁓ And then just to that they learned so much. My own mom went out and got a CT angiogram after our conversation because she had a stress test because she was having all these issues and nothing, there was no real revelation discovered there. And then she went and had the CT angiogram. Thankfully,

you know, no bad reports or anything, but it put herself at ease. Peace of mind. Peace of mind. I mean, I'm still shocked that you can get that test, you know, and I'm getting it on almost all my patients and doing repeats on those that have significant disease with fair regularity to assess whether the strategy that we're implementing is slowing disease progression, basically converting soft and rotten plaque to...

calcified plaque which is stabilized and reducing risk of events. And so I mean, it's a huge instrument. In fact, I don't think, I invested in that. I bought some of the original ⁓ developer's shares. Because he was like, yeah, know, it's not ready for IPO, but I'd like to get some return on, I've been working on this for years. And I'm like.

I'd like to own some of that. I'm in. So I bought some from him. But that's not why I prescribed the test. I prescribed the test because in the ways of the Mandalorian, in the words of the Mandalorian, this is the way. This is way. is what medicine should be doing. Yeah. But it's going to take ages for the slow monstrosity of conventional medicine that requires committees made up of so many people to...

create something as a guideline and then force the secondary payer model into utilizing the strategy, it'll be forever. So just miss your window, have your heart attack, or be one of the one in eight people who find out they have coronary artery disease by being dead and save the $1,570. Your choice, okay? I know what my choice is. I'm drilling down on this information on my patients. Yeah, and there were so many people, so many more that were like,

they appreciated the practical guidelines that you laid out. And then some people that were ⁓ even patients of yours that reached out and said that they've been working with you for a while and their experience has been, has been awesome. that's great. I didn't get all that feedback. it was neat. And especially because it was the first episode and this is, you know, the impact is going to be immediate local. Right. And so here on the peninsula, especially is where I saw a lot of that. So it was really neat, but

Well, I know we're going to focus on the outdoors, but I've got a lot of stuff I want to talk about in my health slides. We got to leave at least 15 or 20 minutes for a recap. It's really cool. I got it. We'll definitely get into it. Yeah. You know, God, I love to talk about, about the outdoors and ⁓ you can kind of lead me where you want to go. Yeah. can go from here. Yeah. So you talked about in the first episode, you're coming to Alaska. You touched on where you grew up, you know, the things that ⁓ were norms for you growing up.

and how Alaska was just this like, you knew from the moment that you got here that this was gonna be home. And so I wanted to lean into Dr. Bob as the outdoorsman. you don't have to like tell us all about your upbringing or anything like that. If you're interested in that, you can go back and look at episode one. But I do wanna talk about those early experiences, fishing, hunting, exploring the outdoors. I feel like for every young man,

It is ingrained in your memory that first moment that you're holding a fish that you just pulled out of a body of water on a hook, you know, on a pole or that first dead animal that you're like, I killed this thing and I'm going to eat it now. Like I remember, I don't even know how old I was. I remember holding a bluegill at probably some like tiny little lake in Northern California that my grandpa dragged, you know, dragged me out there. And I thought it was the most amazing thing ever. A bluegill is like nothing, but

I remember it being like, I'll never forget that. I could have been three years old for all I know, and I'll never forget that experience. killing my first rabbit with a 22. had an older gentleman from our church took us out and being able to track a rabbit as an eight or 10 year old and to be able to shoot it and kill it and then hold it and be like, we're gonna eat this later. You never forget stuff like that.

I want to hear about those experiences from you, those early outdoors experiences, those early influences in your life that kind of shaped this outdoorsman that you are today. Well, it's kind of interesting, you you talk about that first fish. I can visually see that even though my brain collected that data at I think about 40 years old. I was with my cousin Billy, who was an older cousin in New York City, a cement walled goldfish pond.

I mean, we're talking the least outdoorsy, but yet I can see that bobber go down.

And I set the hook and it was like probably a two pound carp and all the goldfish went flying because this big fish was flapping around. I remember, I mean, I can kind of visualize and feel that experience. And yeah, so it was impactful. And I tell people all the time, it's funny. Everybody loves to dry fly fish, right? And I'm guiding fly fishermen for probably the nicest experience of a dry fly fishery that you can get is going fishing for trophy art at Grayling, right? And I have tremendous spots for that.

with really good dry fly fishing. And I find myself after a few fish on dry flies, I want to catch them on a strike indicator. And it's like, and that's the opposite, right? Most fly fishermen would never choose a strike indicator and a nymphing over dry fly if they can catch, I'm willing to catch a third of the fish on dry flies, even if nymphing's working better. I'm the opposite. I think that bobber is ingrained in my DNA now. That bobber going down was like, you know, that was a...

Yeah. It pitted me in my life. It taps into that original experience. Right. I mean, so it's like, and I tell that story all the time. It's like, you know, I'm still addicted to the bobber going down. You know, I mean, yeah, it's cool to watch a fish hit something on the surface, but boy, I like watching that bobber go down. Yeah. It's a, I think it's a primal thing. I think we are made to be out in, in hunting and fishing. And I think there is something there that you never forget that because physiolus, or our evolution of, as, as men.

And we can't get rid of that, even though we go to the store a lot of the times and grocery shop and whatever, that primal instinct is still there to go hunt and fish and kill and eat. Well, and I recently had a conversation in an interview similar to this about why outdoorsmen are lucky in the longevity spectrum. the reality is it's first of all, being an outdoorsman drives you into the outdoors.

which is where our oxytocin is released, where we're witnessing sunrises and sunsets, which sets our circadian rhythm. So there's those health benefits right at the get You're out there. You get the benefit of that and we ain't getting it right now locked in your dungeon. And we're not getting it sitting in the office space. And we're not getting it in the big city. ⁓ But then you add to that that

generally in pursuit of the highest quality protein on the planet. So, hey, now I have access to better food quality than the other humans out there. That's true. don't participate in this activity. But then third, generally it involves some movement strategy. Yeah. Which is another huge part of the longevity equation. And then the final aspect is being outside.

pits you against the elements. And our body's ability to defend thermoregulation has a lot to do with our...

our vascular health, how well our blood vessels work. And because we mostly live in a controlled environment, we've lost that adaptability. Our vascular systems are lazy and it's accelerating the speed at which we develop cardiovascular disease. And when you're outdoors, you're freezing your butt off or you're hot and sweaty and you're physically exerting yourself and you're collecting the high quality protein and you're in the kumbaya of the outdoors. You're one on one with God if you've got your eyes open.

⁓

So I love the outdoors. what's so cool about your experience compared to we talked about dr Peter Peter Tia Casey means we talked about those individuals a little bit in our last episode you have such a unique position having the knowledge that you do and the same knowledge that they have as far as

the longevity and wellness, but you have this whole other aspect of, know exactly what it's like, what you're getting from just being outside, enjoying the outdoors. You connect those two worlds together. And I think that's really what sets you apart from any of these other voices in the health and longevity space, which I think is super, super cool. ⁓

little disclosure, the interview I was in is a guy that's going to try to ghost write a book for me. He pitched me and his exact pitch, which I said, look, the work's been done. Atiya's book, phenomenal. Mean's book, same thing. I don't argue with any of their major tenants and very little discrepancy in minor things. Okay. My big discrepancy with them is when I read them and this is not

direct, I've never heard them say this, but when I read them, I think they have a view of existence that's completely secular. They think life's an accident. And that is so incongruent with my view of why we're sitting here today having this conversation. I mean, I lead my life with prayer and I pray for wisdom and guidance because the amount of information we are getting ready to get assaulted with,

in the longevity space, in the healthcare space, with AI being able to grind up to... Nobody can understand it all. And I know I'm not smart enough. I'm certainly not smart as Peter Atiyah. I'm not as smart as Casey Minge, graduated number one in our class at Stanford. These guys are mental giants compared to my level of intellect, but I've got something that is pretty helpful. It's called drive and...

I mean, I guess the word I'm looking for is compliance. I can execute the strategies and prove through demonstrating my own problems that it works. And so this guy presented to me, he said, Doc, I think there's a real opportunity for a book here because nobody that talks about longevity talks about it from a Christian perspective. And half of the population is a little leery.

of hard science. Okay, we went through COVID. There was a lot of BS. There was quote hard science that was wrong. I knew it was wrong. I was watching it. And other than not wanting to get canceled, keeping my head down, I was giving my patients what I thought was cogent device in the context of the debacle where we saw that COVID was able to overtake the medical system and create all these profit driven models that really didn't.

promote science, they squelched people who had any resistance to what they said was true and like tried to destroy them. And boy, there's some prime examples of that. anyways, this guy is going to, we're hoping that it'll happen. So when that happens, I'll come back on and talk about the book. But we've gone through some interviews for the first two chapters and got a publisher and also that we're going to present it to.

through ⁓ an agent. Because this guy has written books and has got them published by a publisher, not self-published. I love it. Yeah, we'll definitely have to circle back around to that part of it for sure. agree, though, they did great job with We won't go down that rabbit hole. Talk to me about something, So you shared the experience, that first fish that you caught. What about hunting? What was your first experience with killing something?

You know, it was the little kid pellet gun deal, you know, so it's not quite as epic. And I probably can't remember the first chickadee I dropped out of a tree, you know, when I was eight years old, my Benjamin, you know, pump pump. Yeah. 22 caliber, you know, that that was, those are things that I'm not, you know, it's kind of like when you take the magnifying glass and you're frying ants on the sidewalk. Yeah. Some of that little like not your

highest moment as far as the quality human. I can't really say I can recall that. I did used to shoot rabbits with it and I would eat them and I would generally tan the pelts. I did a lot of snake hunting growing up. I captured non poisonous snakes and some poisonous ones and kept them as pets. But I did a lot of moccasin hunting and rattlesnake hunting and skinned them and things like that. I just kind of was always looking for some opportunity to go interface with nature, not just be in it.

But part of it. And that's the part of being a consumptive outdoorsman that creates the full circle. You're going, God put this stuff on the earth. It is the highest quality source of food on the planet. It's wild. And I'm out in the wild eating berries, shooting things that have the healthy fat and the high quality protein that I get to eat. And so when you do that full circle, you don't just go out and observe nature.

you are part of the food chain. I think it's important. I do think it's ingrained in a lot of us. I know I think that people lose their touch with that when they get implanted into a concrete jungle. unfortunately, I think that too much of our population is insulated from the actual natural world. And then they get...

like weird ideas. You know, that impact our freedom and stuff like that. You know, that scares me that the populations is becoming more concrete. Yeah, they're becoming detached with that. they live in concrete. Yeah. Do you feel like you had a influence early on that you look to, that you follow, like you wanted to follow in their footsteps as far as their

example of being outside of hunting and fishing? I had two dads. Okay. I had a hunting dad and I had a ⁓ dad, fishing dad. My biological dad was my fishing dad. He was a maniac. Okay. He grew up in Montauk. Well, he grew up in New York city. They fished out of Montauk, ⁓ which, is a saltwater Mecca in the Northeast. So he was addicted. And when we got to Texas, he bought a boat and I fished.

40 weekends a year with him and we just fished all the time. So I mean, was, and I loved fishing. I so it wasn't like I was begrudging it. know, most kids were out goofing off on weekends with their friends. I was fishing with my dad most days, literally. ⁓ My hunting dad came about as a friend of my dad's who, when I expressed interest in hunting, he's like,

You know, Bob, I grew up on the stoop in New York. It's not like I actually got to shoot a lot of stuff, you know? I mean, and so he really was never exposed to hunting. That was not passed down. know, maybe thinking that my grandfather was from Sardinia. It's an island. known for, you know, fish is part of the, you know, it's one of the, it's actually one of the blue zones, right? And so, you know, the fish is a big part of the...

nutritional approach on the island of Sardinia because it's surrounded by water. And so, you know, maybe there's a little bit of that. But anyways, he introduced me to a work friend who adopted me as his hunting son. And he is actually one of the men that I originally established all Alaska Outdoors Lodge. Okay. And we're still great friends, although he is he lives down in Texas now and his shares have moved into other owners at this point. Okay.

When did you feel like you came into your own? Like you had these influences that you followed after that helped you kind of shape your identity in the outdoors. When did you, like looking back, when did you kind of see yourself becoming your, I want say your own man, but like that you had something to give to other people. When did that start to connect? I was guiding other kids fishing by eight years old in the summer. I mean, so my dad worked on weekdays, right?

You probably knew more than the average eight year old. I could grab two fishing rods, grab a kid that had never fished, say, let's get on our bikes, put a bucket on my handlebars, go down to the lake, which was a saltwater estuary lake that was a mile from my house. There was a bait camp there. I knew the bait camp lady, you know, like, you know, my mom would give me a buck 50 so we could get a pound of shrimp and I would go set up.

We'd go fish and catch redfish and flounder and speckled trout. And the eight-year-old would feed his family that night, as would I. I mean, I'd bring home, hey, I caught a four-pound flounder. I'm going to keep that for dinner tonight. So I started guiding at a very early age, and I enjoyed it. I enjoyed letting other people experience the things that I love. And so that was easy for me to gift other people. That transitioned all the way through college.

I mean, I had a little John boat. think my folks got me that when I was about 12. And so I had a little aluminum flat bottom boat with a Merck 9.9 and I'd run back in the bayous and set trot lines. And I started trapping raccoons for pelts. And I mean, I did lots of stuff like that. So I was just like, I just thought about the outdoors all the time if I wasn't playing baseball. It was basically about what it amounted to, you know? ⁓

So with that boat, I still had that boat when I went to med school. mean, was taking, and then I figured out where I could catch fish around where I went to med school. when I had free time, I was fishing. And I had guys that were in med school that were like totally unexposed to fish. And I'm like, I'll take you fishing. And I I still talk to those guys. One of them came to the lodge this year. Awesome. Yeah. And it will be in one of the episodes of Dr. Bob's Wild Diaries, which we will eventually get to. Yes, I know. I'm looking forward to that part of it for sure.

When did aviation come into the mix? Was that when you were in Alaska? ⁓ Was that something that started here? Yes, absolutely. So the aviation bug bit me when I came up here in 1986, which was the first time I came up. And it was with the explicit point of going to commercial fish out in Cookland on a drift boat. the season finished up.

for the fishing, the commercial fishing, about 10 days before I had to go back for med school. So my dad and my hunting dad came up and we hired Alaska West Air from right down the road here. Well, it used to be at Island Lake. Now ⁓ they're over on a...

Arnessia and Doug Brewer flew me out in the beaver and it was like, I had never given it much thought, but we went over to Crescent West, landed, spent five days, fished. We were really the only people on the lake. That lodge that's over there was closed down at that time. There was one guy that was caretaking it. That was the only human being we saw. Saw a lot of bears. Had them in our camp. We had the full gamut, but that flight in.

You know, I'm looking at this kid, he's about a year older than me, so another kid, right? We're in our early 20s, and he's flying this Beaver. And we flew through the crap weather of that Crescent Valley. It was like a low ceiling, and he was having to turn around, and he finally squeaked us in there, right? And I was like, I gotta be a Beaver pilot. That was it. I mean, was like, never thought about being a pilot ever, to 100 % I'm gonna be a Beaver pilot.

It was like a light switch. So that's a easy defining moment to answer. Yeah. I was like, yep, I'm in. That's awesome. And then I'm a Beaver pilot. That's I own two Beavers now. I just bought a new one. You told me that. Yeah, that's exciting. So what was that process like? I feel like there's probably the pilot mentality is very ⁓ orderly. There's a sequence of events. There's if you're a quick decision maker, that's a plus.

If that isn't a learned thing, and if it's just innate, that's gotta be a great plus to have. There's probably a lot of parallel with being a physician and being a pilot with decision making and the, I don't know, algorithms, but you know what I mean, like the process behind it. Did you find that? Yeah, you know, I'm pretty meticulous. Meticulous, I think that's word I was looking for. think that's a good quality to have as a pilot or a physician.

Now I'm meticulous in some domains and in those kinds of domains, especially in an area that I have real good grasp. I'm just kind of detail oriented, you know, and, really you want that in both of those occupations. If you're putting your life in the hands of another human being. And if somebody's flying an airplane, you are. And if somebody's being your doctor, you are. And so I think that that nature has been in me. mean, as far as kind of like.

Obsessive a little bit. You know, I got that. I mean I got some OCM for sure. Did you find it difficult learning how to fly? Did you feel like it was pretty not easy? I mean, but did you feel like it was like oh I can do this. I'm a natural. Yeah, I did. I actually did. I mean, I think my instructor told me I soloed the fastest of anyone he'd ever had. Okay. You know, and the same thing when I went and did

When I went and got my instrument rating, of course I'm busy at that point. I'm trying to get an instrument rating A, because it's a good thing to have B, it lowers insurance. But it's a time consuming process and it's very intensive. And ⁓ I went down to Seattle and I contacted a guy that had an outfit down there and I said, I'd like to get an instrument rating, but I don't have a lot of time. And he's like, well, how much time do you have? I said, I could probably pull off a nine day stay down there.

He goes, nine days, huh? Never done one that fast, but we're going to give it a try. And that, and so we got there and that instructor and I'm drawing a blank on his name right now, but he's long since retired just 15 years ago or more, 20 probably 20 years ago. He threw me in the simulator and he kind of did about an hour and a half of simulation and just was giving me commands to control this airplane, you know.

And he got done with the simulation and he said, you know, you may be able to pull this off. He goes, you have really good control of the airplane. And I'm like, yeah, I'm not like the pilots you're training. I said, I do nothing but takeoffs and landings. I am in control of the airplane. I'm landing. I'm doing short, you know, because at that point I was already flying a 185 commercially.

but didn't have the instrument rating, which was going to improve the insurance package. You get a 10 % discount right off the get-go. And I had a Super Cub. And so I was pretty skilled at aircraft control. And so once he realized that he wasn't going to be struggling with controlling the aircraft, and he just had to teach me instrument flying, he said, OK, we might can get through this. And I did complete the instrument rating. I left Seattle after.

being away nine days, seven days on the ground, I left with an instrument writing. So yes, I got some natural ability in that domain, I think. That's awesome. Did you feel like you had any trial by fire moments? I feel like when you're going through ground school and you're learning how the aircraft works, I'm sure during those hours, you have to build up so many flight hours, correct, before you can fly to other people. Did you have any moments where you're like,

Oh crap, like the oh crap moments? Yeah, I've gotten lucky a few times. I mean, I made bad decisions or had an absence of knowledge to not understand a situation that I now understand, you know, and like got away with it, but barely. know, to learn from. know, simple stuff like, you know, if you're taking off of a curved, narrow runway,

keep the damn thing on the water as long as you can. Don't let it fly early because if you fly early centripetal force is going to want to keep you going straight and you got bushes and trees if you go straight and you don't have positive control of the aircraft at low airspeed. So if you try to put it into a turn, you're very capable of stalling the inside wing and then.

falling out of the sky at low level, which is a little bit as painful than doing a lawn dart, but still. you know, it's like simple things like that. Oh, keep the thing on the wall.

as long as you can build up adequate airspeed for positive control, then rip it off the water. Don't get in a hurry about flying. Little things like that that sometimes you have to learn by the school of hard knocks. Definitely weather lessons that I've got. I'm way better at predicting what weather I'm going to experience by doing my typical in the morning weather assessment for whatever my flight strategy is going to be for the day now, 30 years down the road than I was when I first started doing this. ⁓

So,

you know, there's a lot of that, you know, I didn't I haven't had any really really scary episodes No, I I had not no time if I ever thought I'm doomed, you know, yeah. All right What has changed in the last 30 years with? Aviation in Alaska. Do you feel like you have more resources available? Is there better mapping? Is there better weather?

⁓ predictors and technology out there than when you first started? Absolutely. I mean, so the weather prediction technology is way better. I have three or four different apps that I can use. I can see where the water is coming from, the low visibility, the wind. The FAA website that I utilize, you know, when I'm getting a weather briefing for myself every morning has better bells and whistles, better technology, becomes more user friendly. The avionics particularly.

the GPS moving maps is extremely awesome now. I mean, you know what direction the wind's coming from because your plane can determine based on if they're hooked up right. You can see what direction you're trying to fly and what direction you're flying. It can calculate the wind. It tells you the direction of the wind and the airspeed. mean, you just have so much information. And then the cameras that the FAA has put up that

let us look at what the spots that are usually the crux of the problem. You know, are you going to be able to get over that saddle? There's cameras all over.

the webcams they call them that are part of the FAA wave aviation website. So I basically, you know, I start by looking at the conditions, barometric pressures, the gradients that I'm going to experience when I cross mountain ranges. Then I start looking at the specific cameras along my route to see what the weather actually looks like right now. And then I'm looking at the windy app, which is not an aviation app, but is an extremely useful app. It's free. ⁓ WINDY.

if you get that app, it's the sportsman's friend. So yeah, you know where you're at, you know where you're going, you know what the weather's supposed to do there. Satellite imagery has come a long way in just probably 10 years, let alone 30. Yeah, I mean, it's like when I get ready to land at a small lake,

I have to understand my inherent payload. I have to look at what the wind's doing on the water, because that's going to affect takeoff or landing distance. But I can just pull up my GPS, magnify the lake, take two fingers, touch it, and go, OK, it's 0.3 miles long. I'm at 2,500 feet.

That big and we don't have full fuel. Yeah, I can get in and out of there. know what I mean? It's like back in the old days. Those guys were just guessing, you know, they were flying over the lake at at at a certain speed, trying to decide whether they were eating wind or not, which was slowing down or speeding up there. So you're trying to find you want to measure the lake and and count.

You're counting by seconds knowing how fast you're going to determine the length of the lake to then decide if you're gonna have enough runway to get off after you land. So it's pretty easy compared to how the old guys had. Man, yeah. Those guys were pretty, they're still alive. I know like the ones that lived through that time were the real pros for sure. My gosh, that's crazy. ⁓ It seems like when you came to Alaska, you knew right off the bat that you were

like you wanted to do something as far as building a lodge. Is that correct? Yeah, I pretty much decided at the end of that summer that I was going to, I knew I was living in Alaska. We had that discussion. I stepped off the plane, sunset behind the Alaska range ⁓ on the day after summer solstice. And it's like the sky was radiant with color. And it was like.

This is it. This is where I'm living. So that decision was made. And then I got through the summer and I looked at the opportunity for an outdoorsman and somebody with a guide mentality that loves to show people how to do things. know, if it's a high longevity lifestyle also, you know, how to be successful. I love to help other people be successful. I think that's our highest and best use, you know? And so it was very easy to start to think in terms of creating a vision of a fishing

lodge in a guiding operation. So I pretty much decided that ⁓ that year before I started med school and then it all fed into it, right? I mean as soon as I got out of med school, went to residency, I started my pilot's license. I mean everything just started working towards that but I had to had to seven year.

you know, thing I had to deal with from the time I got introduced to Alaska to when I was going to be able to move up here after getting done with the training through the occupation that I had chosen, you know? Yeah. And so, but I made it up here quite a bit during those years through various manipulations and strategies, many of which involved me getting training while I was in Alaska. And that was finagling basically, but I was pretty good at that. So I watched.

a call it like a mini documentary by wild wild fly productions on on the lodge on these youtubers wild fly productions you can look them up you can look up all ask outdoors on there they did an amazing video on their experience with you and I highly recommend that it's

Super well done video. think it's got like almost 3 million views. 2.9 million last time I looked and that was the first one and they did a second one and the two videos. The first one is entitled A Week of Fly Fishing in Alaska. And if you just go on to any web browser and type in a week of fly fishing in Alaska, it will be the number one yet. Because it's got 2.9 million views. Nobody's beating that many views for that particular word combination. You could also put in wild fly productions.

Yeah, they're artists. Yeah, totally. And that was a huge game changer for me. Yeah. And that feeds into something we'll eventually get to talking about. That video got me discovered.

by a group of producers from the British Broadcasting Company, a division called Rare TV. The guy started pitching me about three winters ago. And the first winner, he tried to get the Discovery Channel to take on a concept. We called it Dr. Bob's...

monster landings play on words. Okay. Big fish. Oh, land in the air. Yeah. And the discovery channel, I guess, had gone through some ownership changes and you know, after COVID, a little bit of money had dried up and they were not quite ready to fund the project as they would require it, which would require a lot more funding than, than the scope of project that we did for the outdoor channel. So the next winter when they didn't bite again right away, he pitched it over to the outdoor channel and like two weeks later, he called up and said, yep, they want to do it.

We're funded, here's the outline, see what you think. And the show is set up where we go out by various escapades. The cameraman came up in early August and stayed till mid-September. We did combinations of either fishing to fly-ins or... ⁓

a little bit of bird hunting. did some bird hunting and then he also, we got a couple of moose. While I was doing all of this, I had been dumping buddies out in the refuge. You know how the area between Skelak and Tustamante is just crawling with moose now from that burn back in 2015. So I dumped a couple poor souls out there that are strong and dumb. One them is my partner, Dr. Brad Street, in my medical practice. But they're strong and they each

got

a moose and so so they were put they got to like film some of that or they didn't get to film any of the killing but they got to film me flying the meat in and out of me packing I said I get one quarter you're not packing all that because I hadn't packed a moose in quite a while okay you know yeah

And as I'm aging, you're always wanting to test yourself. Now I had a much better test than that for another experience than I just did. My most recent really cool outdoor experience. And in fact, I wore the beanie cap and it's, I, changed my hair from my sit gear here to my Kodiak deer hunts, which is a beanie cap. ⁓ actually a guy that does our refrigeration stuff for us out at the lodge. He bought a tender boat a few years back.

and he does tendering for the salmon industry or commercial fishing industry, we'll say, most of the year. But he takes it out to Kodiak for about a month and a half, and it's a liveaboard 110 foot vessel, and really well set up operation. We had a great experience. And my wife, ⁓ I affirmed in my affirmations a four by four ⁓ black tail. ⁓ But that was the only thing I affirmed. Guess who shot the four by four black tail?

my wife. And I knew it when we were flying out. I was going through my affirmations and I'm like, I had a picture of my buddy Chester, Dr. Bradstreet's 4x4 black tail. And he's a hunting animal. He's one of the most accomplished hunters I've ever known. And I'm like, boy, it'd be nice to get one like that. And so my affirmations on my vision board, I was always visualizing the mounted.

That's what I was visualizing was this future. I'm going to have a mount like that. Yeah, I will. That's a taxidermist. It's just going to be the wrong picture. But you know what? Any man of any decent salt at all would rather that or his kid than himself. Yeah. And I'm 100 % that guy. was so proud of her. That's true. That's awesome. We hunted hard and so we shot that deer.

2.89 miles from the shore where we were dropped off on Kodiak, which you don't walk as a crow flies. And once it was such a nice animal, a true trophy, ⁓ I had to bone it all out. Not bone it out, but I mean. ⁓

quarter it and all the meat, all the packable meat. And then I caped it all the way to the back of the neck, cut the head off. So I had the head, antlers, face still attached, long cape for a nice shoulder mount. And then I strapped all of that on my pack and it weighed 98 pounds. And it took me four hours to pack it, however many miles I actually walked, I don't know, but it was brutal. I'm getting old. But 98 pounds.

over three miles over uneven terrain. The last two hours in the dark.

We saw the biggest brown bear I've ever seen that day. My wife was not impressed that we were packing a deer with me as a Kodiak ⁓ black tail deer popsicle in the dark with headlamps on for two hours. She did not think that was all that cool. And I knew we were up against the clock because we knew the big deer were off the shoreline quite a ways. So we had forged out there and luckily shot the thing in time to like be done, at least processing it by dark. But I only got...

I could go about a hundred steps and I'd have to rest. you know, I had packed an entire deer the day before that she shot about 1.3 miles and didn't set it down at all because it was a smaller buck. I had just the meat. We didn't save the cape or anything. And so it was probably like an 80 pound pack. it went, but so I had a little fatigue in the old, you know, in the old thighs by the time I started. And it was a long day. it was, whereas the day before was beautiful weather, we were pitched against the elements. It was sleeting.

and snowing and blowing and it was rough. I'm stronger and healthier because of it and the pain is no longer rememberable and I only desire to put myself in the same predicament again. Heck yeah. Not bad for how old are you? 61? I'll be 62 here in a couple of you go. Yeah, I mean that's... And I weigh 150 pounds. to be proud So it's one thing, know, packing a 98 pound pack when you happen to be dropped onto the planet at 6 foot 4...

and

270 is a little different than when you're 150 pounds. You know that was that was 66 % of my body weight I was carrying. Yeah. Right. I mean I'm carrying a hundred pounds and I weigh 150 so 66 % of my body weight's on my back.

I, know, at one point my wife was feeling for me cause I was grunting a lot and she's a strong gallon and she's 14 years younger. she said, well, let me see if I can pack it. ⁓ so I threw it on her back and she went about 10 steps and she said it.

Nope, I could probably do it over flat ground, but I'm gonna get hurt. You know, I so it was a staggering load. And I did weigh it. I mean, I took my pack and hung it on the digital scale that was in the processing area of the boat. anyways, that was a great experience. Awesome. We're talking outdoors, so I'm rambling. We're going off in all kinds of But hey, Kodiak Custom Deer Hunts, I'm not worried about my week. I told them I want it at 2027 on in perpetuity. I get the third week in November. And I just talked to them on the way in to gain permission.

about talking about his operation. Awesome. And I did a little video of it and it's it's ⁓

I'll give you the post in case somebody wants it. It's on my Vimeo channel. So I'll send it to you in case somebody wants to see. It's about a 40 minute video that really shows the entire experience from landing in Kodiak to when we departed, all of it. know, staging, flying out to the boat, landing, moving into the boat, how we went from the big boat into the shore landing craft, all of that. You meet the two, the main three folks that helped put on.

on

the show, how they fed us. We subsistence king crab fished. So Susan, I got to bring back three big giant king crabs. so it was an amazing experience. Something I think I want to do all the time. Sweet. Yeah. Send me the link. I'll definitely put it in the show notes and then yeah, the video, share that video. That's pretty cool. Let's go back to the lodge. It's not uncommon for people to have lodges here in Alaska, right? Especially where we live in the Kenai peninsula. When you

You had the, it sounds like you had the dream already and you were just adding the different things that you wanted to, you already had the experience as an outdoorsman, you were adding the whole aviation aspect ⁓ to your repertoire.

What was the most important aspect that you wanted to make sure that all Alaska Outdoors had from the very beginning? Like what was the level of ⁓ expertise you wanted? So I had developed a business model that I still think is unique because I don't really have competition in this domain, so to speak, not at the level that I can do it. So what I saw was there was two major options with side options.

There was go to a remote lodge and break the bank. Okay, now you could go to a remote lodge and it might not be as expensive if they like mostly fished from the waters that were contiguous with that lodge and the aircraft was only getting you there. But that's not that common. Most of the time these remote lodges are quote daily fly outs, right? But you're getting into in current day pricing 12 grand for a week long experience.

come to a road system based lodge where the emphasis would be on the saltwater fisheries and with the Kenai Peninsula in mind, the saltwater fisheries and the the river fisheries that were on the road system, right? With, yeah, we probably use an air charter service to drop you off at a remote location one day, which is remote, but is not.

that kind of experience that those Bristol Bay lodges are getting where they're out in the boondocks and there's not at most of their locations probably a ton of pressure. Well the single location flyouts like Big River Lakes, the Cuscatan River, Crescent West, which when I was there in August in 1986 we saw the Caretaker. Now it's like a...

It's like an airport. mean, there's planes coming in and out from Anchorage, multiple air charter services in and out. Still a great experience. Yeah. Still one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen on planet Earth. And I've been gifted to see some pretty cool places on planet Earth, not quite the exclusive experience. So I thought, man, there's a niche. Don't put your lodge on the river. You can access the river by road, by boat.

your lodge on a float plain lake and create the opportunity to give people that exclusive remote outdoor experience while not breaking their bank. Let them feed themselves. Hey look, if you're out in some lodge out in the middle of nowhere, somebody's got to feed you. Guess who's feeding you? The lodge owner. Guess what? He's got to hire people and have them live at his lodge. He's got to feed them and pay them.

Right? All the foods got to be flown in. I mean, so you start looking at the infrastructure costs of that. All of a sudden you're like, wow, you you don't realize it, but 12,000, 2000 of that was eating. You can eat a lot cheaper here on the Kenai peninsula with a kitchen in your suite and, and go into local restaurants. Totally. Yeah. So I knew that there was kind of this niche that I was going to develop and I did that. And then it took a while to promote it.

but it got promoted and promoted and it did better and better. And then the hinge pin, the thing that made the wheels came off, which is I had to buy another beaver and train up another pilot, which I spent the entire summer last year with another pilot paying him to do what I could have been doing with me sitting in the right seat overseeing him so he's great at what he does. He's a great pilot.

Physical skills are probably better than mine because he's a young athlete, you know, and I'm aging, right?

His judgment, he had a lot to learn, you know, mean, he tells me, tell told me all the time. So yeah, I would have turned around way a long time ago. And I'm like, I know, but I'm, know, I want you to understand when you have to turn around and I want you to get more comfortable about being able to push through weather that, know, the average private pilot ain't even going to go that day. Well, we're trying to go. Right. I mean, people are disappointed when we say the weather is so bad, we can't go. So there's a lot of days when it's not optimal and we're going to try.

wasn't gonna just like, yeah, okay, you're checked out, you can fly the Beaver, good luck, hey, here's what I would do. No, I mean, he, by the end of the season, there was a couple of days where I'm like.

Dr. Bob's taking the day off today, guys. You got this. It's beautiful day. The guide who I had hired to help me guide to let me, A, to put on a better trip for the clients. So we have a guide and a pilot. Of course, with me as the pilot, you got a guide with you. So we have two guides. He had been with me for four years. So I knew that I had somebody that understood the fisheries well enough that it was not going to be a downgrade for a client to send.

them with Josh Darrow, my new pilot, wonderful young man, and Eric Locker, my guide. Between the two of them, they got everything I can offer. And now we need a lot of days, we need two aircraft worth of opportunity due to...

the wild fly video and the exposure that we've gotten and, and, know, and now I've got hopefully some new exposure, which is going to be even further driving, you know, our ability to, keep those planes in the air. That's awesome. I think it's important too, to be able to pass on that, those things that are the intangibles in that you can see it for yourself. Cause you've built this thing from the ground up and the lodge, the lodge will be there. The planes will be there. ⁓ Dr. Bob is only going to be here for so long.

I think that they're gonna jerk my I can't I won't be able to fly commercially I got nine more years so they're my future and both of these guys is there a hard stop on that with pretty much on insurance not not on I mean I'll be able to fly the airplanes long as I want yeah I won't be able to get seat liability I see or whole so if I want to fly that beaver when I'm 71 that's fine

But if the motor quits and it goes in the trees, it's a total loss. gotcha. You know what I mean? If I walk away, it's going to be a walk away a lot poorer because that thing's just, I'll be paying out of my pocket to get it lifted out of the refuge or, know, I mean, you know, or if I make a stupid error and crash it just because I can't land anymore, I would anticipate I'll probably have the guts to still fly privately in

in the aircraft and I'll take that exposure because I think the Lord is with me and when he's ready, if that's how I go down, that's not the worst ending for Dr. Bob. But ⁓ I'll probably still fly, but it'll be all for fun at that point or R &D. What's R &D? Research and Development.

scooting around and you know the new technology in Cubs now is there's some opportunities to convert a Cub to a really amazing functional aircraft and you know I'd like to see that in my near future converting my existing Super Cub which was my first plane into a better faster more efficient R &D plane and so that might be what my thing will be is hey I'll go out and check where you guys ought to fish tomorrow. Gotcha. know cool and I'll have to by then I'll have to have another

set of pilots and guides that I've trained but I got nine years to do that. But the beauty of Eric and Josh is...

they found their niche and I'm making sure that I take good enough care of them that I don't lose them. That I don't just become a stepping stone for advancement for them. I figure these two guys will be running this part of the business before I turn 70. It's like, you call me when you need me. That's awesome. So what kind of experiences do people get when they look up Alaska Outdoors?

where are they, I mean, you don't have to give your like secret scroll places of where you're going, but what can people expect as far as the experiences that they'll get? Well, typically, so our typical trip that we offer that's unique to the lodge is the ultimate expedition, we call it. So it's an all day fly out where I've got the beavers set up with full audio so we can talk.

listening to music while we're flying. I'm getting a narrate about Alaska. And generally, I usually go visit with the group or groups if it's a mixed group. Usually we take four people, five if they're not big and they're related. ⁓ If you have five plus a pilot and a guide, you're gonna have seven which puts three people in that middle seat. It's a little tight. If you got a kid, great. If you got three full adults, that middle seat, three adults.

adults in a beaver, it's kind cramped. For the amount of flying, we're going to be out for three hours in the air. I'll visit, kind of try to get an idea of what they're hoping for out of the trip and depending on the time of year and what their original, you know, are they fly fishermen? Are they hardware? Are they agnostic? Can they do both? You know, I mean, and so I sort of try to feel them out and then generally I'm going to give them an anticipation of what I think we can accomplish tomorrow based on my current weather assessment.

And then I always reserve the right to update the weather assessment in the morning. We have that discussion down at the dock. Here's what I think we're up against. I think after discussing y'all's desires, this is going to come the closest to meeting the needs analysis. Still keep us in good weather where it's pleasant. Not that we always do that. Sometimes it's like we want to catch big silver salmon. All right, we'll go fly into the teeth of the dragon. We'll see if we can get there. You know, that happens. ⁓

But we, so we sit down, we come up with a strategy and itinerary. The main fish that I target, really good trophy grayling fishing, a handful of spots for decent rainbows on light tackle fly fishing. ⁓

A ⁓ lot of nice spots for Arctic char. I have a tremendous repertoire of lake trout spots and I do a lot of fly fishing for lake trout, which is kind of a square peg in the round hole. People don't think of lake trout as a fly fishing species, but we catch them on flies. I mean, it's way better on hardware, but if, you know, I can get people to punch that lake trout, you know, checklist with their fly rod if they're desiring to do that. ⁓ Do a little bit of sockeye.

salmon fishing, just harvesting in some saltwater snagging areas when the seasons allow that. Really good at pike, particularly in the spring. We've got some big pike areas. I'm hopeful that Dr. Bob's wild diaries, that the camera, that the season two will be, will come to pass and that they send me a cameraman for early June through the end of July so I can show the nuances of the differences and the experience of the ultimate August, September.

then

you know. Which is what they filmed. That's what they filmed. Okay it was August September. And then ⁓ really good Dolly Varden both freshwater and sea run. Okay. Spots. Cool. And the sea run spots we get into some really beautiful ones in the fall where they're going through the spotting changes. And. ⁓

Of course silver salmon and you know silver salmon is is one of my favorite fish And you know, they're good eating they get some of the highest quality food value of anything God decided to throw on the planet for us to chase after ⁓ They fight They live in cool places. Yeah, they're good biters. Yeah, I mean in decent numbers most years And so it's a great fish to hunt and so those that's kind of my main repertoire and then the other thing that I do in

September as I start tarming and guiding and ⁓ you know we've got places where we can go shoot all three species of tarming in one day if somebody's got the physical capacity and can hit anything you know yeah that's not easy but I've done it many times and or we get a lot of collectors that'll come up and dedicate three trips usually spread out by a day ⁓ to ⁓ to try to give them the opportunity to go enough times that we can

Certainly get a willow tarmigan a rock tarmigan and a whitetail tarmigan the last couple years I think we've had one failure out of the guys who were coming up to collect each year Okay, I mean so you know and and I think my might be my memory might be foggy

I think they had, all of them had a chance. Yeah. know, mean, not for lack of opportunity. Right. Well, I'm not going to say they missed 40 birds, but I mean like, they did actually have a chance at a rock tarming and they it. And we didn't get into a lot of rock tarming. So that's kind of what I do. And, and some of that should be captured in this new series, Dr. Bob's wild diaries.

If they have not on the website, the Outdoor Channel website, they have not published. It's on the website. You can go and go to Outdoor Channel, type in Dr. Bob's Wild Diaries. There's about three pages. It's pretty brief. It's not on their schedule yet when I click on their schedule page, but their schedule only goes out a week. but I saw a separate posting on another site that said that the first airing is going to be on Friday, February

20th or 23rd, whichever day is Friday at 8 30 p.m. And that's when it's going to air. It's Fridays 8 30 p.m. Eastern Time, 20 episodes and it should be fun. ⁓

And I mean, had a great time filming it and it's got some satire and I had to do all the voiceovers. So I've seen the episodes, but not the finished cuts. I'm looking at these grainy little windows while I'm reading my lines, you know, and the grainy little window below it. The guys did a great job. I was impressed with the producers. A year from now, it'll be on my lodge.

YouTube channel. It'll be on rare TV YouTube, but for the first year you'd have to be able to have some way to get into an outdoor channel subscription to see it. ⁓ Was it a surreal experience being able to just live your life, do your thing and then this film crew guys following you around just being able to capture all that and knowing that it's going to be shared with the world? Was that a little bit of a surreal experience for you? It was really cool. Yeah. I mean, you know,

I mean, this is going to sound so egotistical, but you I never watch any Alaska Outdoors stuff because when I've watched it, I'm like, eh, it doesn't even compare to what I do all summer long. It's like, and I've said forever, if somebody that had some skill set in

filming and editing just followed me around, they'd have a hell of a show. And then it fell in my lap. I mean, I got discovered by the Wild Fly. I sent Scotty when it came out and I had the dates, I sent Scotty Finnegan from Wild Fly Productions, thank you. Hey, thanks for getting me exposed. It's worked out really well. And he, of course, congratulated me. And I said, hey, maybe someday we have to have you come on the show and talk about it. And so he's entertaining that.

It creates some overlap. Maybe it helps ball shows grow a little bit too. But yeah, so that was just a blessing to have that fall in my lap. like I said, the experiences that I do on a regular basis are so amazing. The seat that I've got to take viewing planet Earth from the front seat of a Beaver or Super Cub for 30 years and putting in a lot, 300 hours in the air every summer.

and then going down and participating in what that whole infrastructure has available for me, the rivers, the lakes, the hunting, the mountains. It's like, I've lived a privileged life and I'm very grateful for it. And yes, it's surreal to be able to go, finally get to share all this cool stuff with more than just the four people that are in the plane. Yeah. I think what's cool is that you are...

Like getting to know you over the last couple of years, like you're the real deal. And I think when people meet you, they realize that if you meet Bob, whether it's in the healthcare space or the outdoor space, your knowledge, your experience, your desire to bring other people with you, there's no... ⁓

not instability, but you were true to your passions and your pursuits in life, and people want to follow people like that. You know, I guess it's hard to say what, you you hear a lot of the new everybody's supposed to be thinking about, you know, self-help and personal growth, and I hear it around a lot.

think about what you would want people to say at your eulogy. And one word that I would want to get in there pretty early is integrity. I find it to be one of the most important aspects of human decency. know, if you just don't have integrity, I mean, you know, that's a real problem, you know, and I try to have integrity.

in everything I do. You know, I'm not going to go down the prophet driven rabbit hole and compromise my integrity because I think there's a nickel in it. If I sort of fudge the truth a little bit, that's a hard stop for me. mean, you know, I'm my my my on the wall in my office is Proverbs three, five dash six. God lead me to find the right information and understand it.

Right. I mean, that's basically what Proverbs 5-6 is, and I don't want that just from the biblical standpoint. I want it from medical and all those things. So I just ask for guidance. I wouldn't want to...

like in any way be deceitful to somebody. mean, it's like, and so I try to live by that. I'm perfect. I'm certainly not perfect, I'm sure, but I don't think people would put me at the other end of the spectrum either. Yeah, I agree. What are the testimonies of people that have booked a trip with you through I'll Ask Outdoors? Like one, where do these people come from? If you can share, I don't know what personal, like not.

the personal details of their lives, but some cool like locations that maybe people have come from either in the country or around the world or just testimonies of people saying what their experiences were like. God, we've got lots of different countries. ⁓ know, Australia, New Zealand, the ⁓ European countries, quite a few of those, Japan.

and then all over the United States. I mean, I would guess at this point, there's probably not any state that's not represented. I mean, we're 30 years into this. I've probably checked them all, probably checked every state. ⁓ all walks of life, all levels of experience. mean, I can.

You know, you don't have to be a fisherman to go on a trip with us and experience a wonderful time. You go out and do, you know, three hours of flight seeing in South Central Alaska, especially if you catch a nice day, and we land you at a few places and wet nurse you with your inexperience through catching some fish that are beautiful. you know, it's the epitome. I can't tell you how many times you say testimonial.

Many times I have had people tell me it was the best day of their life. Literally. mean, I'm like, be careful. You're married. ⁓ better. You got kids. We caught that on camera. You know, we're doing a TV show here, Joe. You probably want to like, let's do another take. Except for the day I got married and when my kids were born, this was the best day of my life. But literally, it's astonishing how many people say it was the most amazing, the best, the, ⁓

That's the kind of experience that I'm able to provide people. And so to get to do that on a grander scale where a viewing audience that can sit in their living room and see those places and those activities that generated that opinion from the human who got to experience it firsthand, yeah, that's pretty cool. Yeah, that's awesome. Do you ever get the...

temptation to be, to feel a little burned out. Some people that get into the, hospitality is what comes to mind. This is a little bit different when you're, I mean, you do have the lodge, people are staying there and there is this experience, but do people ever just, are they just ever difficult, ever like, ⁓ man, like a drag on the trip or the experience or are those stories few and far between? The drag on the trip, the individual causing,

The trip to be bad is pretty limited. We call it the 5 % rule. There's 5 % of the people you were unlucky they came to your lodge. And it didn't matter where they went. They were going to have, they were going to create negativism. But that's pretty small percentage. I would say that the burnout

is from how physically challenging what I do is. I'm 61 years old. I did 100 flyouts last year in four months. Okay. I had a handful of days, not very many that weren't scheduled. And I had a handful of days where we didn't fly because of inclement weather. Not doable. That's outside.

in the elements that's getting up at six in the morning, getting weather, getting lunch packed, eating breakfast or getting my breakfast prepared because I usually eat it on final at the first spot just to follow my intermittent fasting protocol that I try to do. ⁓

That's, you know, the evening visit with the clients the night before, you know, and so there are times when your time and bandwidth is so short that there's a lot of. Yeah, right, which is what you do when you're burning out. ⁓

I have an identity where I've learned to replace attitude with gratitude. So if I get to where I go...

It's, are you out of your mind? You're getting ready to get in a Beaver and fly out for the day with these nice people. They are going to be so happy. You, the fact that you're physically tired, get over it, man. Winter's eight months long and you're going to be sitting on your butt. You're going to have to, you're going to have to.

go to a gym or a climb on a piece of stationary equipment to approximate this organic movement that you're getting that's keeping you alive. You're outside. I mean, you are the luckiest guy in the world. You do not have permission to even think about being burnt out. And so I just basically that's what I do. I go, no, no attitude, all gratitude. I'm too lucky to be burnt out. That's awesome. How long did it take for you to learn that?

You know, I've evolved recently. I mean, I'm going to say over the last five to seven years, I've really started to reframe things. And if something irritates me, I go, why am I looking at this wrong and allowing irritation? It's like, this is not an irritant. know, like one of my clients said, when I had a mechanical issue, he said, Bob, this is...

Maybe I shouldn't say it. He said, this is a first world white person problem, not a problem. You know, I mean, and I'm like, he's got a point there. had, I lost a cylinder while I was out in the field this year. it had to, we had to leave the plane and get Alan had to come pick me up. We had to go change the cylinder the next day, you know, but at the end of the day, it's all fixable, right? And it was really on interesting because it happened on an odd day, the very first day of filming.

So we go out, we film, we have this amazing day. We got these characters from Texas that are just hilarious. We catch fish hand over fist at all three spots. And I fire up and I'm like, that's a lot of smoke. What the heck? Shut back down, there's oil everywhere. I'm doing my limited mechanic, you know, what the hell is this? like, well, it's bad.

I'm thinking, I hope this isn't something in the main case that's, know, cause that's like a motor swamp. And I'm out in Lake Clark National Park. So I kind of start getting on the, you know, contacting base through the satellite and Alan says, yeah, well we're flying till.

until last flights at 7.30, so we'll be out there at 8.30. So we sat there, luckily the fishing was good. We caught fish for three, four hours. I had the cowling all taken. I had it all ready for Jim. He brought the mechanic out. Jim inspected it. We decided it was probably a cylinder. Didn't know for sure what was wrong, but it was letting oil into the motor. It was coming out the exhaust, and that's why there was a lot of smoke. And it turned out, we figured out the next morning we went back with a fresh cylinder and we went out.

two cubs, mine and Jim's and we swapped the cylinder there on the shoreline and got her all and we filmed it. Now don't think they really incorporated it into any of the shows. I can't recall it this time. might get a little, I mean I think you'll hear speaking of it but I don't know that they really did a lot with us changing and swapping the cylinder. But we pulled it off but the point was you would think

Here I am, this guy has been flown from London to be a cameraman for seven weeks. And we're on the first day. And I'm sitting looking at an airplane and going, I might be trying to find another beaver tomorrow. I mean, this thing would...

we may get into this and it's like, yeah, this is a motor swap in the wilderness. Or do I hire a helicopter to fly it from here to Port Allsworth and have them swap it in an aircraft hangar? I mean, you would think I would have been depressed out of my mind, right? And you know what I came up with? ⁓

man this is exactly the content these guys are looking for. And I was at peace. I didn't have anxiety about it because I knew, I mean at end of the day my faith is a big part of this. And I think God's in control and I think he's got big things for me. I think he wants me to reach a lot of people. I hope that my outdoor exposure helps to bring people to the way I think about.

we should lead our lives, which is you should wake up every day and pray for God to help show you how you can help others. That's my first prayer every morning. Holy Spirit, guide me and take over my life. so, you know, I was like...

You got a weird strategy here, God. I ain't sure how it's going to work out, but I'm sure it is. I literally was at peace. So that can show you, you know, kind of the transformation of just reframing things and always looking, you know, I affirm in my affirmations that I do every day that I find the positive in every situation. And sometimes it's not easy. Yeah. Sometimes you've got to really work at it. bet. Yeah. Let's take a break. OK, let's do it.

Yeah, think ⁓ Let's talk let's talk Costa Rica you did you just visit down there and then Like how did the whole Costa Rica thing even so as it show up? It has a lot to do with these affirmations and all the things that I do so it's interesting ⁓ You know, I started using this platform that my

Christian coach had created to try to keep you focused on anything in life. But I particularly use it for focusing on following Christ-like approach, you know. ⁓ But I had built some affirmations and so you come up with, you know, it took me about a month to go through all the webinars and understand how to use the platform and how to set it up.

But I got it all set up. So now I'm like, okay, well, I got to do some vision boards. And so one of the things I put on my vision board ⁓ for fun was catch all of the billfish on a fly rod, which I never caught a billfish on a fly rod. And so I thought, well, that'd be kind of cool. ⁓ That'd be a fun thing to do. It'll help me to see more of the planet and, you know, in that, in that chasing that, that bucket.

adventure. So here was March and I was down in Cabo and I was fly fishing a little bit but we and had a billfish opportunity presented itself I would have tried for it but I didn't even really have a billfish fly rod down there I was fishing for lighter tackle stuff and

My partner, Johnny, original partner, one of my early partners in the lodge is getting up in the years and I recognized he'd sold his interest in the lodge to Alan Helfer with Talon Air. So Talon and I are kind of partners in this now.

I kind of recognized that he probably wasn't going to be coming up this direction. So I had blocked off a week, the first week in April to go down and see him. And while I'm in Cabo in late March, he calls me to tell me he just had a heart attack. ⁓ so he lived, he's doing okay. Well, it turned out that he had invested in a good friend of mine and his who actually met Clip through Johnny in a boat.

that Clip took down to Costa Rica to test the waters of thinking about doing a bill fishing operation down there. A 68 foot Hatteras, three bedroom, three bath house with three gyros. This amazingly beautiful boat. So Clip was a tugboat captain and took basically his retirement and bought the boat with Johnny who has, he's pretty well healed. But

they didn't really have a marketing strategy and they got down there and they did some, you know, kind of under the table fun trips, you know, mean, like people they knew that came and helped cover expenses and were super successful catching sailfish and marlin out. Not a lot of fly fishing, although Clip had caught some on flies. Well, when I told Johnny, you know, I was coming, I was supposed to be down there to see you in a week. And he's like, you know, Bob.

I got about all I can handle just doing rehab and I'm pretty tired. He goes, why don't you go fishing with clip on that boat of mine? Cause we're selling it. Like, why are you selling it? He ain't got a business plan. He, you know, he got it. It's like, we, we, know, we're running out of money. can't fund this thing forever. I'm like, all right, I'll call clip. So I call clip and I, know, of course clip and I talked because of Johnny and you know, we've risen about that. And he's like, doc. He's like, I took clip.

in a whole other story back in the day the Twin Towers fell was the day he killed.

the moose that I dropped him off on. And I flew out the next day and got it because it was going to rot. And I knew it. And then after I got back, was like, couldn't fly at all. I was going to say, yeah. was like for four days we were shut down. But I snuck out, got it and got back. God. anyways, he's like, I still owe you for that 66 inch bull that I shot, know, that you dropped me off on that I shot with my bow. And it's like, I just need gas money. Come down and go fishing before we get rid of this.

it's on the market. So he shows me a video of the boat. I'm like, wow, that thing's beautiful. I looked at prices and I said, Suze, you want to go to Costa Rica and go fishing? Sure. So we head down there. I go, you know, I'd want to fish on a fly rod. He's like, yeah, we can probably get you one on a fly rod. He goes, you know, it's after peak. He said, you know, it's like if you'd come a month ago, been easy. 20 chances a day.

We'll be lucky. will probably get four, we'll probably bring up four to eight fish a day on the teasers. it'll work out. We'll come down. So we go down there.

And of course my wife catches two sailfish the first morning with hooks and bait, you know, because they want to get some fish under their belt. Okay, that's fine. I'm, and the women always go first anyways. And then after that, it was my turn. It's like, get that meat out of the water and just get some attractants out there. And I'm ready with my fly rod. Long story short, they were begging me to switch to bait by the end because I had a couple of opportunities. I touched one and it didn't stick. I broke a Marlin off on the hook strip. He goes, why?

Why'd

you throw it that? said, well, it was out there in the teasers. And there was my flyer. He goes, yeah, you aren't landing that on that 12 weight. I'm like, well, you never said nothing, you know, so they would have switched and put a bait out there and caught it by rod and reel. And so the next one we hooked, that's what we did. And I fought it for about eight minutes and it came off the hook. We did hook Marlin. Here we were down to the last night. Got a picture of me with the...

like standing there with my Syngenetic shirt on and you can see the sun is touching the horizon. And they were begging me because like we only got the morning the next day and then I got to go home. I'm like, no. I said, I'm gonna catch one on a fly ride or I ain't gonna catch one. And I said, I'm gonna catch one because I had affirmed in my affirmations.

that before I left Costa Rica on this tour, and I keep that as my number one affirmation to remind me how affirmations work. I'm going to catch a fly rod. I mean, a sailfish on my fly rod. Three minutes later, the dumbest sailfish on planet Earth got in the teasers. I must have missed it eight times. I mean, when I say missed it, I wasn't doing anything wrong. It just wasn't sticking, but it just kept hitting. And then it hooked and then it God lit the sky.

It's the most surreal experience. I've got this beautiful photo collage of the whole Costa Rican experience now. Catching that sailfish on a fly rod was one of the pinnacles of my outdoor life. And I've shot a moose that in 2006 was 55th all time, 76 inches. I've had some pretty cool outdoor experiences. It was one of the pinnacles.

I landed in Costa Rica and it hit me similar, not quite because it was dark when I landed, but I mean when I got my first view of Costa Rica from the elevated ⁓ driving platform of the...

Marlin Clipper. Okay. And just looking at the Costa Rican coastline and surf waves coming in right next to the harbor we were staying at. We're going out into the ocean, Pacific Ocean. And I'm looking at the hillsides, the tropical forest mountains. And it was like, is the tropical version of Alaska. It's like the first time anything has ever hit me like Alaska. I suspect when I finally get to Africa, it'll be the same deal. ⁓ wait and see. Yeah. New chapter whenever that happens. And I don't even

haven't drilled down yet. anyways... ⁓

We go out, we're on the boat. got to surf the second longest left in the world. We did some fishing one day in a panga. We caught sailfish. After I caught the one on the fly rod, the next morning we went to conventional gear and I landed two more before 10 30. And then we taxied in and I surfed the surf break right by the, the, the Harbor where we keep the boat in Capos. So it turns out it's a great, you know, opportunity for us Alaskans to get the heck out of, of Alaska in the bad years.

think the peak season is down there for bill fishing? November through March. Right when you don't want to be here. Exactly right when people are trying to get out of dodge. And of course you got tuna in addition to marlin and sailfish and you've got inshore fishing for roosterfish and amberjack and snapper and I mean we were eating

what I would call ceviche, but they called it carpaccio down there. mean, you every day, mean, fresh, you know, you just killed it. And the guides and the deckhands making it into fresh raw fish. And I mean, it was just amazing. The whole experience, the cultural experience, we would park the boat usually in a bay near the shore. kind of worked our way south along the coastline each day. You know, go out and fish, come back in, park in a bay, take a panga, go eat at a restaurant. Otherwise we ate on the boat. I made breakfast every

day. That was my service to these guys that were that were they were very

You don't have to do that. We'll do it. like, allow me to serve a little bit here too. know, I mean, that's, that's, so it was just such an amazing experience. And I just told clip, said, take this boat off the market for now. I and so I literally at not insignificant and not great timing expense. I've been covering the dock fees for that boat for about half a year because he was out of money. And I've got.

We're going in the last 10 days in February, which is probably the pinnacle of the peak season. And ⁓ the video that I make, I made a video about my wife and I's experience ⁓ from kind of beginning to end. And I can give that one to you too. It's nothing terribly private in it. But.

this one is going to be peak season unless we get hosed by weather or a mechanical or some kind of, know, like sitting on the shoreline looking at your beaver that's not flying. And you start filming. I should have some incredible content and I've got some people through acquaintances that are well off that are investor minded people that are looking for businesses that will fly. So, Clip and I are kind of putting together a business plan. He's had the boat there long enough to have a

good a handle on expenses so we can kind of know what the operating expenses are without guessing. You know, we've kind of got that. That's packaged already. We kind of can get an idea of what you can charge for this type of experience through basically research. And then it's like, can I market it? Well, I know I can market it to my lodge clients that are big fly fishermen and it doesn't impact my fly fishing season because it's a mirror image of it. It's the opposite.

time of year. I think I can...I have a pretty big network of people in Alaska. And this fits the Alaskan travel experience quite well. It's not a terrible experience getting down there. got to...like we're going...oh, I think I'm leaving here.

into the 17th and getting back on the 28th. And the flight itineraries such that you go Seattle, LA, LA to San Jose and then we so I got to leave Anchorage at about seven in the morning. I get in at midnight. So it's a long travel day, right? But hey, two hours shuttle and a nice shuttle to get me to the boat. a.m. I'm on the boat. Suzanne and I are sleeping in a queen bed.

about 5 a.m. the motors rumble and wake me up and I go back to sleep and at 10 a.m. we get woke up because we're trolling. know, and at 1030 my wife's reeling in a sailfish. That's awesome. Okay. And so then at the end coming back again your departure is about 1 a.m. and you get back into Anchorage at about 4. So.

It's not a terrible 4 p.m. know, so and that one you can sleep pretty good, you know, and as that's Alaska Airlines, which is what I presume most Alaskans use, although maybe not all. There's probably other time frames. That's the only time you're going to get into San Jose if you use Alaska Airlines. But that's a pretty decent travel strategy. I'm not dreading it. I always, you know, I always pay the eight bucks and work on the computer until it's time to sleep. And the other thing is

like my wife got upgraded to first class. She went home before me because she had to get Brett to his first diabetes follow-up appointment with Dr. Sheridan ⁓ and that was going to overlap my trip so she went back a couple days before me. ⁓

She was just straight MVP, you know, that I think you make that at 20 or 25,000 miles. She got upgraded to first class from the long flight from San Jose to LA. So not a lot of competition for the frequent flyer seats. And I suspect I'll, you know, I'll probably get upgraded going down there because I bumped my status up again this year. I've had to fly a lot more recently. ⁓ I suspect I'll get upgraded from ⁓ Seattle to LA.

and from LA to Costa Rica, both directions, I would guess. then the Seattle, the Anchorage, those are hard upgrades because we got so many slope workers who are competing against, and they're 100Kers instead of 75K. So it sounds like this could be a unique opportunity for people living in the state and I mean other places that you've had, you've just built connections and networks with through the lodge. A destination,

fishing opportunity and just escape from Alaska? Like is this something that you think would be a whole separate ⁓ entity or something that? It'd be a separate entity but I'd probably use each entity to feed one another. So I mean it's easy enough to kind of put a little nugget on the current website that says, we got an operation down in Costa Rica in the winters. And same thing on that website. If it starts getting some traction, you feed it the other way. ⁓

But it's more than just fishing. mean, there's tropical rainforest tours. There's crocodiles. There's sloths. There's iguanas running around everywhere. There's monkeys and macaws flying everywhere. mean, you know, it's an amazing place. The people are like super nice.

And ⁓ you know, the topography is beautiful. It's one of the best surfing destinations in the world. It's amazing for scuba diving and for snorkeling. And so you don't have to just fish. mean, and this boat is a live aboard house. So you can sort of say, OK, I want five days on the boat that you don't have to go into shore and eat dinners at restaurants. know, the crew is happy to do all your meals on the boat. ⁓ You don't have to do fishing every day.

go long range and spend two days at one of the fads, which is a fish tracking device that they've put in, which is where the marlin are. That's a pretty long run. So generally if you go do that, you give it an overnight way out in the middle of nowhere and then fish another day and then come in. you can stay close to shore, just fish maybe not too far out for just sails and then, you know, come back in and spend nights in the harbor. There's fishing under the light. It was amazing. mean, just everything.

about it was like wow.

I knew I had to go back. And now I'm set up and I've got some investors that are going to look at my proposal that says, you know what? I've already got a lot of people that trust me and my integrity about phishing experiences through my phishing launch. think our email newsletters about to hit 7,000 and it's about a 50 % open rate. Just went out today actually for my first winter installment.

You know, the website has a big reach from the constant referrals that we're getting from Wildfly because it stays out there. And so I think that the marketing won't be the problem and we can operate the boat within competitive rates for similar prospects. And the thing is, this is like a solid captain, right? This is, you know, we talked to a guy in the industry and he's like, if you have a good boat.

and a good captain and the captain is the real crux of the problem. Reliable, you know, leader in his life, not an alcoholic. You know, I mean, there are a lot of guys that are in the fishing industry that have a lot of sociological problems that can end up becoming a client's problem. know, they just don't show or they're not all there. You know, he's all there. He's been bill fishing for

Decades this was a boat that he so he was a tugboat driver in Gulf Shores, Alabama. Okay, okay and He had a lot of time off because that occupation is a lot of stints right you go push some barge from one place to another and then you get flown back or you Barge it back and then you have a period of time off because you've been living on a boat for 10 days, you know

And so he would do bill fishing tournaments. He would be the captain for these rich guys that like to tournament billfish, know, the Michael Jordans of the world, but not quite to that level, right? Jordan's got a boat down there in Costa Rica. and, ⁓ and so one of the boats that he ran was this boat that he bought that him and my ex partner, Johnny bought. And the guy died and the family.

kind of really liked Clip and thought that it would honor his memory and that he would be happy to know that Clip took that boat over. So they offered it to him at a pretty decent price and he bought, they, two of them bought the boat from his family. that, so he was familiar with the boat. knew the boat inside and out. It was a good investment. The boat was good. Took it down to Costa Rica. Amazing experience. And now I get to pitch it on two five day trips. So I'm going down there and I've got three, got two other guys that are going to be with me.

the first five days and then one of those guys is going to stay and another guy and we're going to see who's interested and brainstorm, hey, do want to turn this into a business? A Costa Rican flagged boat where we can make a website, advertise it, all of that. ⁓

So should be putting together another iMovie here in about a month and a half that hopefully will be even more impactful than the one that I did. But we had a great time. I mean, it was amazing. That's awesome. And that's exciting to see how that develops. I have a friend of mine that's always, every summer we go and pick a spot to go fishing and we're on the peninsula a lot. We've been to Valdez and done some stuff there and he's been nudging for the last couple of years. We should go do something like.

in South America and Costa Rica. I want to say that's a place that's come up. I feel like in the last five years, I've talked to a lot of Alaskans that are actually visiting there as their winter escape anyway. And I think it's because it's a safe place, it's cheap, the food's good, the people are friendly. All those things. Yeah. So I think it's cool that you're developing that. And I hope it works out. Yeah.

at the end of the day, I'm pretty sure it's gonna, but time will tell. I mean, we'll see if it seems like it's really where we're supposed to go or not. I'll know a lot more in about a month and a half. A little early, yeah, about a month and a half, we'll call it. I'll keep my eyes, ears So I'm stoked about that. And one of the coolest experiences, we're gonna go segue right into health now, okay? Thanks for doing the segue for me.

Manny (1:36:30)
If you enjoyed today's episode, please consider supporting the show by joining me on social Each week I share the most thought provoking, jaw dropping, or just interesting moments from conversations just like you heard today.

I'm currently on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok at the State I Am In podcast.

Engaging with me on social media by liking, sharing, reposting, and commenting what you think is a simple and cost-free way to help other Alaskans and people everywhere find these conversations.

You can also subscribe on YouTube and wherever you're listening to podcasts, whether that's Spotify, Apple, or iHeartRadio, wherever, be sure to leave a review.

These small actions really do make a huge difference.

Manny (1:37:12)
committed to growing the state I'm in by sharing thoughtful, honest conversations and voices from all across Alaska. And if you or someone you know has a story that reflects Alaska beyond the postcards, gift shops, and tourist traps, I'd love to hear from you.

Now, more than ever, I believe sharing the voices of our fellow Alaskans truly matters, and I will continue to do this work for as long as there are people willing to sit down and share meaningful conversations. Keep North Alaska, and thank you for joining me on the state I am in.