Bull Shoals Lake

Nobody's getting any rain.

Bull Shoals Lake has got no water in it.

I mean, it does, but not much.

And so, I mean, we were, shoot, dog.

I've been a PADI instructor since 2000, off and on, not continuous through that time, but...

Have done a lot of diving, been lucky enough to dive all over the world, but I live in north central Arkansas on beautiful Bull Shoals Lake, so I do a lot of diving in Bull Shoals Lake.

Kind of grew up hunting and fishing in the Midwest and really enjoy that and have kind of transferred that to a love of spearfishing and freshwater here on Bull Shoals Lake.

On our first dive trip, we went to Bonaire.

And Bonaire is very, very good about telling you about the lionfish problem in the Atlantic, in the Caribbean.

And so that's when the spearfishing kind of my first taste of it.

I'm just a spotter, but I had no idea at that time how much an invasive species like a lionfish could decimate reefs, or that it could be this big of a problem that it actually affects so many other species.

And then when I was doing my scuba diving the Midwest road trip last year, I stopped and got to meet Liz and go around on Bull Shoals Lake a little bit and hear a little bit about... spearfishing there and I actually got to give it a try myself and so I didn't actually hit any fish but I did shoot the gun a couple of times so that was good and I got some really nice walleye that I did not catch someone else caught but they gave me some of their walleye because I think they felt sorry for me And I got to take it home and cook it up and it tasted really good.

Yeah, yeah.

When you look at Southwest Missouri, south of Table Rock and Bull Shoals Lake, um, where it is kinda the northern edge of the Arkansas outbreak, because of access, um, because small landowner acreage, 'cause tough terrain and hard to get in and do additional deer management, we just don't even get many deer killed in that area anyway.

Yeah, we've chosen to let it run its course outside of just carcass movement regulations-

Yeah

You take your car and you rip back roads like I love to do.

And then you get on this little ferry and you can ride the ferry across Bull Shoals Lake.

And while you're on the ferry, everybody gets out of their car and they talk and they hang out.

And I was talking to this retired army sergeant major and we were talking, he asked my license plate, my car, we start BS and he followed me on Instagram.