It looks like this weekend... it's going to be more of the same so that's exciting now when you're out there chasing pelagics sometimes that'll keep you busy all morning uh other times they just may not be around or you may want to mix it up a little bit and try to slide off to a reef and find some bottom fish so how's that been going we were out on saturday and i would say that i mean we still caught plenty of fish um amberjack red snapper vermilion snapper trigger fish uh did not hook i don't think we hooked a single gag grouper but i was fishing more over to the west and off alabama and you know it was um get we're not known for a gag grouper over in that area but i would say that it wasn't slow but it was like a below average bite you know we still caught plenty fish were a and they were picky like they wanted live bait um more than they wanted that you know dead bait and they didn't want to have anything to do with any kind of jigs um except for the vermilion snapper did pretty well on those on uh some of the smaller slow pitch jigs you guys out of out of navarre there um what's the what's the bottom fish bite been like for you

yeah for me it's been pretty decent like you said though that some of the fish are on the smaller side but That's pretty much expected this time of year.

We've already had one snapper season.

Now we're in the late snapper season, the fall.

Usually the fish are a little bit smaller because most of the bigger fish have already been caught and kept.

The bite's still pretty good.

I caught most of our fish the other day just chunking some cut bait.

Is that going to potentially put my kayak into – am I going to capsize if I hook a big fish and I've got that much drag on? How do you handle setting your drag and being able to stay balanced in the kayak?

What's your attire on the kayak, and how do you beat the heat otherwise? You got any other tips and tricks to get a little more fishing time in?

Yeah, I mean, just covering up.

I'm a big advocate for covering up everything you can.

Fishing pants, long-sleeved fishing shirts with hoods.

you know, cover, keeping your head covered, you know, wearing a hat, keeping the sun out, especially on a kayak with it being so close to the water, that sun reflects off of the water right next to us.

And, you know, it's hot.

You can't, like you said, you can't get on the boat and haul butt, get some wind in your face.

all right enough of the safety message um tell me about the fishing what you've been up to

A lot of people will read about this kind of thing, but what did you learn from actually doing it in a Danny Meyer environment?

I mean, first of all, the instinct to be on the side of the employee is an incredible thing to learn how to do.

And so in other environments, somebody does something wrong.

Somebody shows up late.

Uh, maybe they're 15 minutes late and, and in another environment, the, the, the mode dapper on die might be yelling at that person.

They're saying like, Hey, why the heck are you late? Get back, get him, get, get in there, change your clothes.

You, you should be here.

Um, so what, what did you see that made you bet your career on kiosks there?

and

storms every day.

So it's like by the time it gets ready to, you think it's going to clear up, we get more rain.

I will say this, you know, I do a lot of flying my drone this time of year, especially like in the afternoons down the beach, just because I want to get some cool shots of tarp and cruise down the beach.

And honestly, I probably flew my drone like 10 times.

And usually I see squalls.

you know, schools and, you know, a bunch of fish cruising.

throw artificial shrimp lure first.

Normally, when I'm out there,

what I do is I'll catch some live bait, whatever live bait is in the area.

So, I'll subiki live bait.

And then I have a live well in the back of my kayak.

So what I'll do, this is exactly how I do it.

I'll have usually four rods.

I'll have two live bait rods with just circle hooks on them.

So you, do you look forward to the summer? Is that the only time of year you night fish from the kayak or, um, tell me what's been going on.

Yeah.

Okay.

I mean, I imagine the key thing that brings people back is that your app helps them uncover the answer, where should I eat? And so we had a fun conversation last night at dinner and wine after talking about the relationship to restaurant criticism.

And, you know, I think Yelp was the first platform that broadly democratized the idea of crowdsourcing for restaurants online.

I think most people would agree that Yelp doesn't necessarily surface the top restaurants with the right scores.

Google neither, although both of them have such ubiquity.

Talk about the role of restaurant criticism versus your friend group.

Yeah.

I understand you've been doing, still been doing pretty good on trout and reds this week.

Yeah, I've been kind of staying inshore because, you know, the weather, we just, we hadn't really had any great that I've been able to get off.

But just kind of still fishing the flats, you know, the sound of kind of my area to go this time of year.

And, you know, mostly throwing topwater and wake bait, just like, you know, normal spring, summer kind of thing that I'm doing, you know.

The redfish and trout are out there, starting to get some, you know, Jack Gravel schools starting to show up inshore too, so.

You know, there's a lot of fish.

You know, you got the ladyfish showing up and the Spanish showing up in shorts.

But why do you throw both?

stained water that type of thing you also mentioned that you try to be out there on peak feeding times i guess does that help you with your confidence as well just knowing hey this is when they should be biting or if you're not getting bit understanding well it's not really peak time yet i need to i need to keep moving and find something that that looks likely

yeah i mean going out there on the peak cheese in the right tides You know, if you can line all that stuff up to where you have the most possibility to catch a fish, you know, the day I went, it was a falling tide.

It was a peak feed and it was about to be sunset.

So I knew these fish somewhere are going to bite.

Am I in the right location? So I'm just going to keep moving until I find something else because they should be biting.

So it's just a matter of finding where they're feeding at.

And I just kept moving and moving and moving.

What do you like?

they're like i don't understand dad it says bluey's gonna be on the tv we waited the 15 minutes it's nine o'clock i'm like listen i can't control the programming in the hotel i'm sorry i'll talk to some people you know we're working with some tech partners maybe they'll they'll figure this thing out but um let's talk about just why bite why now why kiosks and what beyond kiosks

yeah I'll bring it all the way back.

So I've been an operator and either an operator in the restaurant tech side of things for over 30 years now.

Started as a busboy, worked for Danny Meyer, you know, had a whole career in fine dining, which is why Kristen and I always go into like the reservation stuff and whatever.

We kind of, you know, love that side of things.

And I was at a role at Resi.

I was the third employee at Resi, fourth employee technically, I guess, at Resi.

Give me the skeptical side and then give me the optimistic side.