Jacob Knowles

Jeremy Perkins 0:00
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Jeremy Perkins 0:13
All right, we're here in northern Maine with Jacob Knowles. We did a podcast with you probably four years ago, and we'll run through the background and everything, but

Jeremy Perkins 0:22
wanted to check in on you see how things were going. Obviously, we're in the hull of a new boat, which we'll get into. Yeah. But yeah, welcome back. Thanks. Appreciate it. Awesome. So lobsterman from northern Maine, fifth generation, yep, right. And you got into it early on in your life, my whole life. Tell us how you got it. Got into it. I started out as a kid. As long as I can remember, I started out going on my father's boat.

Jacob Knowles 0:49
And yeah, like you said, fifth generation. So I it came full circle too. Once I started, once I got a little bit older and started going, taking it more seriously. My grandfather started coming to me on the boat as a stern man, not only to help me, but also to teach me. So I learned from my father and my grandfather, started at a young age, worked up through several boats, upgrading along the way. And this one's the final upgrade. Yeah, it's awesome. And you know, we had touched base on, like I said, what's next? This was what 2022 I said, kind of like, what's next? Can you scale a fleet? And you said, you're only restrict. You're restricted to being owner operator. Yeah, you can't have a fleet of boats or whatever. So I guess for you, the next thing would have been a bigger and better boat, bigger and better boat. That's what, that's what we're building. Yeah, I can't hire people to run it, which is pretty unique

Jacob Knowles 1:43
most fisheries around the world. You can hire people to run your boats, and you can, you can have several boats. So it's, it's a good thing, I guess, for small business on the coast of Maine, yeah. Every, every, every lobster you buy from Maine is coming from a small, small working family, yeah, yeah. And they even down to, so my father worked at a he did lobster bait down. What was it? Deer Isle area, Stonington, or wherever it is, yep. And yeah. I mean, they're just bagging, bagging bait and then giving it to the stern men, and out you guys go. But that was even a family operation to the bait. Yeah, it's crazy. How far the lobster industry leaks into the main economy. Yeah, like, drives everything. There's so, so many industries depend on the the money generated with the lobster industry, carpentry, I mean, you name it, yeah, that's cool. So definitely, this is the biggest boat you've had when you first started out. What was it seventh grade, right? And you got your apprentice license, or whatever it's called. Yeah, my student license, I had like 150 tags. The boat was not much. She was pretty rough. It was a skiff. I don't know 20. It might have been 20 feet, 20 ish feet. I can't remember the exact length. Little boat, little like Briggs and Stratton. Gas motor to run the hauler and straight, straight exhaust pipe coming out of the Briggs and Stratton, and it blew out in your face right here. So you fired that thing up, and it was blowing right in your face. The boat would only turn to the right. It would turn to the left, but it takes you so long to get where you were going to the left, it was quicker to turn to the right. Yeah. So the steering we had, like 10 degrees to the left and 40 to the right. Now was that just you on that? No, that was so my dad would haul his traps. He had, he had 800 traps in the water at that time. I was, I don't know how old I was, 1213,

Jacob Knowles 3:27
he'd haul his traps. And then when he got in at the end of the day, he'd jump into that me and go haul which I got coming soon. Because my my two sons are five and soon to be seven, and they're they love it already. So especially my oldest, he's talking about getting his first boat. And so I got that double duty coming. Do you have one in mothballs right now? A little Skiff that not yet, but he's been talking about what he's gonna get and how he's gonna get it. He said he's talking the other day he's gonna start saving money for it. I'm like, Well, I started to introduce the loan concept. Yeah. I said, Well, help you get your first boat, and you can pay it back as you go. And it's kind of surreal. It's a full circle moment. And I have a I have I will, especially once it comes time to do it, tending 800 traps myself, and then coming in and going back out with him. It's a lot to add to I know after you get done hauling your traps and working full time, yeah, when you get back to land, the last thing you want to do is get in a little skiff and go back out and do it again. So I have a great appreciation for dad doing that for me. So how many, how many traps could you tend to as under Student Life? Student was 150 really, yeah, and you went to one sitting. It was what I Yeah, think that's what the student licenses. I'm a little rusty, and things have changed now, yeah, since then, that was quite a while ago. Now it's hard to believe that was, what is that? Almost 20 years? 20 years, probably, yeah, we've only Yeah. So you were attending 150 traps with a little skiff, a little skiff, yeah, seventh and in the afternoons, yeah, after dad got off the boat, we'd go out, we tend those traps. That's where I learned we got some funny stories that because dad just.

Jacob Knowles 5:00
Yes, of course. Wanted to teach me how to do it. Yeah, he also wanted to get through the 150 traps quick as he could, because he'd already been on the water all day. So how many traps on a line at that time? They were pairs or singles. So one, one or two traps. Oh, interesting. But yeah, it was, it was education, and

Jacob Knowles 5:20
you did that seven days a week? No,

Jacob Knowles 5:23
no, we'd all, I don't remember, it was probably 232, or three days a week, depending on how the fishing was. Okay. Fishing got good. We'd probably hold them more frequently, but probably three days a week. Now, obviously he went out deeper, but so I'd go out with him on those days as well. So I was fishing in that little Skiff two or three days a week, but I'd also go with him two or three days a week as well. So I was getting double. I was getting the education on the skiff as the captain, and then the education on his boat as as the stern man. So I went on his boat quite a bit growing up, especially even younger than 12 and 13. I don't remember the age when I started going to him, but that was probably much younger

Jeremy Perkins 5:55
than that. Now, were you when, when you stepped on that boat? You were green, obviously. But how quickly did you did you get, you know, your responsibilities on your dad's boat?

Jacob Knowles 6:05
Yeah, I was young when I first started, so I probably didn't have too many expectations at that time. I was more coming just to enjoy it and have fun. But once I probably turned 11 or 1210, 1112, something like that, started actually baiting bags, measuring, helping, helping on deck. I can't remember. I don't think there was. I don't think I had too many expectations at that time, but it put me to work.

Jeremy Perkins 6:31
Yep. So what's a What's the average for a deck hand on a lobster boat? What do you kind of do from start to finish

Jacob Knowles 6:39
throughout the day? So every, every boat is different. Some guys will take one, one crew, and then some boats will take two. In our case, we take two, the stern man and the third man. The stern man will will help land the traps, pull him into the boat, take the lobsters out of the traps, slide them back to the third man. Third Man will have the bait ready to go in. He'll take the old bait out, put new bait in, and then they'll set him back out. Stern man, the third man will will get bait ready for the next traps coming up, yep. And then they'll work together on measuring bend and sorting lobsters. So it's a pretty smooth, well oiled machine. Once you get some repetitions in, once you get a good crew, we kind of work seamlessly throughout the day without having to talk

Jeremy Perkins 7:21
too much. Yeah, so on, obviously, smaller operations, the captain is involved a lot. Are you just going to be on the helm a lot more? Now, I'll probably

Jacob Knowles 7:30
run this one similar to how I run mine. Now I'll have the option, because I'll have the wheelhouse, like we talked about ahead of me, where I could, I could hypothetically get up in there and work from inside and maybe take another crew or something. But for the time, for the for the foreseeable future, I'm going to stay with the crew, so I'll be, I'll be helping most the time I get hands on with the trap. So my my job is running the boat, gaffing the buoys, and running the holler, bringing them up, and I'll help them land the traps. And that's most of my job, but when the fishing gets good, they get backed up, and I'll help them. I'll help them pick lobsters out of the traps. I'll stay involved even on this boat.

Jeremy Perkins 8:10
How many traps do you run through a day?

Jacob Knowles 8:12
No, so we fish 800 and we'll do 400 each day. If the fishing is good, sometimes we'll do five or 600 but

Jeremy Perkins 8:20
when's the when's the best time? Are the lobsters migratory?

Jacob Knowles 8:24
Yeah, so it's open year round, which is pretty unique, yeah? Well, we don't have a season, so you can, we can go now. Actually, we went yesterday. This time of year kind of sucks. It's funny enough. We made a video on the last day we hauled all the things that we don't like about lobster fishing this time of year, right? But, yeah, so the good time is is more in the summer. The good months, the water warms up, the lobsters become much more active. They do migrate. They come in. They come in short for shedding. And they're a lot easier to trap. This time of year, the water gets cold, they don't move. They become much more dormant. They go for deep water, so you've got to go a lot farther to get them. The weather sucks, summertime, fall, that's definitely much more enjoyable.

Jeremy Perkins 9:07
Now, does the price per pound inflate enough for it to be cost effective for you to fish all year round, or you can

Jacob Knowles 9:13
do it this year's been exceptionally low for whatever reason. We've had a poor price this winter, but usually the January, February, price will get up 1011, 12 bucks. Okay, so, yeah, the low volume gets offset by the high price. You can make money in the winter, if it really all comes down to how the weather is for that winter. If you get, if you get good stretches of good weather, where you can actually get out a couple, three days a week, yeah, you can make money in the winter. But this winter, I mean, we've had stretches of 1012, days, 14 days of wind, and it's hard to make money when you get when you do get out, you got to divide it across the 14 days you didn't go. It's really not much profit per day.

Jeremy Perkins 9:47
Yeah. And I don't know how much you know about the supply chain, but I'm just curious, because it's kind of interesting, like with the tuna industry, a lot of the tuna, you know, obviously, go to the Ice House and then overseas, yep, right. And obviously. Some stay here. But even with, you know, crab leg or Alaskan king crab, they travel all over the United States and all over the world. I spent some time down in Florida, and I didn't realize they had a pretty robust lobster program down there too. But awful spiny lobsters are not, not my thing. But does your product stay mainly in the New England area? How does a large travel?

Jacob Knowles 10:26
Large percentage of our lobsters are soft shelled lobsters which can't survive shipping. Okay, very well. So a large percentage of the lobsters that get landed in Maine get processed in Canada. Okay, they have processing facilities there that break them down into meat, and for whatever reason, they can do it a lot cheaper than we can, yeah, to the point where we can't open. I mean, we do have some processing here, but nothing on the scale of what they have there. So a large percentage of the lobsters gets sent over there, processed and then sold back after it's been processed. Like, of course, some of it stays in house. The hard shells will stay, stay in the country and get shipped as live officers, but a lot of the shutters get sold to processors.

Jeremy Perkins 11:08
Interesting. Now, I didn't want to get political, and I'm not going to, but it's kind of interesting on the crossing of the border and everything, yeah, how did that? How did the whole tariff thing affect the industry?

Jacob Knowles 11:19
Yeah, there were some questions around it. In the beginning, it ended up not super well informed on how it all went down and all the details, but we got an exemption on lobsters with Canada, yeah, to my understanding. So it didn't really affect us too badly. I think there were separate issues that were having an effect, where Canada and China were having a tariff TIFF, and Canada wasn't able to send as many lobsters over there as they normally do, so they were having to dump them back over here, which was flooding our market.

Jeremy Perkins 11:52
So there was a little effect there, but I wonder if that's what kept price per pound down.

Jacob Knowles 11:56
Price per down over most of the year wasn't down, wasn't too far below average. We held pretty average for most of the year. It wasn't until, like, late it was, it was November, December, which is usually when we see the price rising. This year it dropped, which was different. Yeah, I don't know what. I don't know what drove it. And again, I'm not an economist. Stay too up to date on all that stuff. I tend to just go to work.

Jeremy Perkins 12:19
Yeah, sometimes there's speculation among industries, and just kind of understanding, you know, what effects, you know, outside, outside influences, have on the industry and and why it would be a good industry to get in, or, or why it would be a bad time to, I mean, you know, you talk oil and gas, you talk construction. You know, if there's a there's not a building boom. It's, you know, tough to be a general contractor out there, building houses, yeah. So just kind of getting into the nitty gritty of how the lobstering industry works, but it was kind of interesting. Last time we had talked, we were talking about the right whale situation in in Maine, and that was kind of a big topic for the lobster and community, and kind of want to check in at a give a little background on it, and be what where it kind of is now.

Jacob Knowles 13:10
Yeah, so the right whales back then was, was at a pretty stressful time for the main lobster industry. There was a lot of questions around what was going to happen. The right whales are an endangered species of whale, and the worry was that the main lobster gear was causing entanglement risk to the right whale. So just to give you a brief background, for as long as I can remember, as long as I've been fishing, we've been marking our gear with certain colors. We'll put the color markers on our ropes. Different areas in New England, up and down the coast, have to use different colors in their ropes. So if they find an entanglement with right whales, or if they find multiple they can identify where the rope came from and identify where there might be a concentration of whales, or where there might be a higher, higher problem, where they can put more effort into solving it. Fortunately for us, we have a very good track record with our color markings, and we've done a lot of things to reduce the risk. When we left off, we were talking about ways that we can reduce risk further. We'd already done a lot up until that point, but they were looking for us to do more. So basically, all up and down the coast. There were discussions being had of how we were going to get our risk down lower. They had a way of measuring what kind of risk we posed. And there were a bunch of ideas. Some some ideas were scary, some ideas were manageable, and we ended up putting the weak links in the rope, so if they get tangled up in the rope, they can break them free, and they don't, they don't get stuck in them. So that got us down below that, combined with reducing the amount of end lines in the water, by adding more gear to each end line, removed enough end lines, we were able to get the risk down to a manageable point where we're we're at a pretty good place, and the right whales are having a good calving season. Year, there hasn't been, I think this was the best calving year that they've had. Their numbers are looking their numbers are starting to go up. They've been kind of flat, I guess for a while. That's awesome. So there's some light at the at the end of the tunnel for that. There's going to be another update closer to 2030 I think 2829 they're going to look at it again. So but for now, we got a moment to breathe.

Jeremy Perkins 15:23
I mean, outside of, obviously the environmental concerns, which, you know, we had talked about some of the, you know, 99% of hunting and fishing. You know, anybody who does it cares about their fishery or where they hunt, and you know, obviously the health of that environment and the species that they're harvesting. But it was, it was affecting distribution. I mean, at the time Whole Foods had dropped, you got

Jacob Knowles 15:48
it, yeah, they red listed us, yeah. And when that happened, like, Whole Foods in in several different places, just because of the red listing, had to, yeah, had to take main lobster off. That's still standing so that, I mean, that's still having a lasting effect on the price.

Jeremy Perkins 16:03
Interesting, interesting. Do you see that reversing, possibly, or

Jacob Knowles 16:07
if they, if they, if the red listing goes away, then, then I think it goes back pretty quick. Yeah, that's a big supply chain. That's a big, that's a big, a big avenue of sales

Jeremy Perkins 16:17
for us. Yeah, so, and then that red listing, that's you guys are waiting for this to come like the report to come out?

Jacob Knowles 16:23
Yeah, I don't know exactly where that stands at the moment. Yeah, not sure.

Jeremy Perkins 16:29
Yeah, no, that's fine. We can look into it. Yeah, it was just, you know, I so so many outside influences are making it harder and harder to make a living on the water.

Jacob Knowles 16:38
Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of angles, making making lobstering tough.

Jeremy Perkins 16:42
So that being said, when it comes to, you know, sixth generation, seventh generation, are you guys seeing a resurgence of people coming into the industry? Are more people leaving the industry? I know there was a wait list for commercial lobstering license. Just in general, you got to wait your time to get get that license. Obviously, somebody needs to leave for for one to free up. Is the demand still there or is it kind of dwindling?

Jacob Knowles 17:10
Yeah, there's people getting into it. This year again, was was a lower or lower on the lower side of average for poundage, and then also on the lower side of average price. So this year's this year is kind of hurt for as far as people getting into it. But yeah, there's the waiting lists are still long, and it's not one to one. Each zone is a little different, but like ours for a long time was, I can't even remember now, they just recently changed it. But up and down the coast, they're anywhere from two to one to three to 132, or three, people have to get out before one can get in. So so the total active licenses are, are dropping. I don't know if there's a certain target that the State's going for. When they hit a certain threshold, they'll, they'll start opening it up more to speed, to accelerate the waiting list, or not. But yeah, there's, there's young kids getting into it for the past 10 or 15 years. Specifically, in the harbor that I fish out of there wasn't too many kids getting in, but over the past two or three, especially within the last three or four years, there's been been several people get their license in our harbor, and some new boats, some young, young fishermen joining our co op. Yep. So it's nice to see some because, I mean, our co op is run. We have 2030, boats in the co op. We all collectively own the facility, but the average age of the members in the Co Op, especially the high contributing members, are older. Yeah, the high liners of the co op are older fishermen.

Jeremy Perkins 18:31
What I found interesting about Maine is that they actually seem to be pretty responsive with population increases and decreases. I know in Southern Maine, the deer population times. How many active hunters are getting into the sport or still remaining? You know, they've opened up doe permits and stuff like that, so that, you know, usually what we see with any government agency is is once, once it's gone, it's gone. What's been kind of interesting about Maine is, you know, they've kind of followed the trends. Now, do you see that in the lobstering industry, they're pretty they're pretty responsive to it, or you got to do a lot of lobbying.

Jacob Knowles 19:08
We're a little unique, because we're not managed or sustained through a quota. So it's not like we can catch X amount of pounds if we go over that, we're in trouble. We're more sustained through the way that our traps are designed, in the slot limits of what we're allowed to keep. So we're letting anything go over five inches. We're letting anything go under four and a quarter. We're letting all the breeding females go. We're actually allowed to keep most of the lobsters that are of legal size each year, yeah. So it's not, again, regulated through any kind of quotas that they could monitor, okay, that they could you know what I mean? Each year, it's not like they're watching it. Each year, they're watching like the biomass and the the rate that we're harvesting in our landings each year. And they do a bunch of different scientific studies all up and down the coast drag. They do larval studies and ventless trap surveys, and they're constantly studying the lobster population, monitoring that way. Yeah. And we. We've been very safe for a long time, managed that way. And I guess there have been times throughout history where we exceeded the threshold of where they felt was safe for the amount of effort that we were putting into it, and that's when new regulations would be imposed and added. But we haven't done that. We haven't we haven't hit any critical points like that for a while.

Jeremy Perkins 20:23
How's, how's the labor industry on your side? Like stern men deck hands, you guys hurting for work?

Jacob Knowles 20:32
Or, yeah, yeah. I think everyone's feeling that. Isn't it interesting? I I'm lucky I got a good crew both, both the guys have been on for Cody's been on for a while now. Tristan has been on a couple of years. They're both great. We have a lot of fun. Yeah, but yeah, workers are are hard to come by.

Jeremy Perkins 20:50
I wonder if it's the fact that Maine has been dubbed the vacation land and has the oldest working well. Now oldest working population has the oldest population per capita. I think the majority of people are up there in age, and a lot of the working class have kind of left Maine for other opportunities elsewhere. So makes sense, yeah. I mean, it'd be interesting to see how well, again, you retire up here, you summer up here. You're going to need that infrastructure. It'll be interesting to see what Maine does to bring back. Yep, trades and stuff here. I know we've been working with a couple of trade schools in the area, one in Waldo, one out of Sanford, and then one out of Westbrook, but their numbers are they're growing, but they're not what they what they should be. Or to satisfy the fact that the baby boomers are leaving,

Jacob Knowles 21:39
right, right? Yeah. I recently joined the, well, a year I've been on there a year the main lobstermen Association, whose board, a board of made up of fishermen, that advocate for fishermen, and they're doing some kind of, they're doing a student program on there, or at least some kind of education, education stuff that we've been talking about, built out a bit just to try to help, help on that front, yeah.

Jeremy Perkins 22:03
So I know, you know, when I talked with Dave Marciano out of Gloucester, he was on wicked tuna, and he had the boat, the Angelica, he had, he had mentioned that, you know, that that fishery was kind of hurting and what have you. And if it wasn't until wicked tuna came along that he had new opportunities. And, you know, obviously with the digital age, and, you know, being able to put your craft or your trade out there on Instagram, YouTube, all the platforms, and then, you know, this kind of resurgence of the old way of doing things, or sustainable living, or, you know, micro farms and this, that, and the other thing I know, I'm a little bit of a product myself. You know, didn't grow up in farming, but decided to make the pivot, yep, in my life to doing it. How well has that kind of helped you out with, with this business specifically?

Jacob Knowles 22:53
Yeah, diversifying in anything I can has been good, yeah, a lot. If I was depending on just lobstering this year with the with the lower average catch and the lower average price, it would have been a tougher year.

Jeremy Perkins 23:06
We probably wouldn't be sitting here, yeah. Definitely

Jacob Knowles 23:08
wouldn't be sitting in a brand new lobster boat. For sure. It wouldn't be built on just, just the hopes of dreams of lobster. Yeah, sure. Yeah. Diversifying has been good. I've done I've diversified over the years into some real estate, and as you mentioned, the social media stuff has been good, yeah, and fun. I enjoy doing the social media stuff. Yes, it's nice to get paid for doing something that I have fun doing and sharing, and sharing the way of life and just teaching, teaching the world about

Jeremy Perkins 23:38
love sufficient. Yeah, I really admire your your sharing in general, because it's, it's very informative. It's, you know, obviously shedding a positive light on the industry and and conservation and what have you. So, you know, it's the more heroic side, if, the way I put it in Instagram and Tiktok, like, that's the stuff that I want my kids to consume, rather than, yeah, other people, you know, it's the you're, you're the heroes of the United States. If I, if I was to put a label on it, the fact that, you know, you guys are out there, you know, building and and supplying and feeding the populace. And I think that that's, that's great. My father said to me when I was when I was young, is like, I don't care what you do, as long as you're a productive member of society. Yeah. And I think, you know, to some degree, people do their job, go home and produce, but like, you've taken it above and beyond granted. There's some rewards and some perks that come with it, but at the end of the day, some days, it's probably like, I'd rather not cut and edit a video or juggling, yeah, so you're talking about building. Walk me through that like you're you bought some houses, or what were you doing there?

Jacob Knowles 24:52
So yeah, we stumbled across the property that was going up for auction right in, right in our hometown, and we've been looking to try to. To tap into short term rentals, yeah, for a little while, a little while. At that point, we were hoping to do it with like, a couple properties, yeah, like, get our toes wet, yeah, we hadn't done it before that specific property. What had 10 on it? They were very old. They were run down. They were built in like, the 1920s 1930s and they were in there. I mean, they were to the point where they should have just been ripped down. We got a good deal on it at the auction, not many people showed up. It was online, and it was kind of crazy the way it all worked out. It was you, it was it was crazy that it, that it worked because when we found out the property was going up for auction, the auction was ending in 24 hours, so we didn't even know we were gonna buy this place. That's crazy. We bought it within 24 hours, and we were, like, excited and nervous at the same time, crap. What did we just do now? We got to fix these things up. My wife's father's a contractor, and he's a jack of all trades with all things building. So so we're blessed there. But so we went in, and we didn't just rip them down, because they were close enough to the ocean. They had grandfathered rights, yeah. So we went in and we fixed up five of them, and then the back five were outside of the zone of grandfathered rights. Yeah. We replaced the back five. We fixed up the front five. It took us, like, a year, year and a half, to fix them all up and get them perfect. And then January of I can't remember the year 22 or three, Storm monster like historical storm, wiped out all kinds of working waterfront. You probably remember the storm I'm talking about from Portland all the way to Eastport. Wharfs and buildings that had been standing for 100 years. Well, those buildings were there since 1926 Yeah, fixed them up and they got destroyed. Well, I shouldn't say destroyed. They got beat up pretty bad. They flooded the insides of them, pushed some of them off their their peers, and made a mess. Yeah, so we were back to square one. We started over, dumped a bunch more money into them, but anyway, long story short, we got them up and going that we've been going for a couple of years now. They've been another good source of diversification. Granted, they got a little more dead on them than I was hoping since the storm. But, yeah, it's been good. I advertise them on my social media, and we have a bunch of followers and fans come up and stay in them, and we've done lobster cook outs there and stuff. So it's been fun.

Jeremy Perkins 27:16
Yeah, it's actually really cool. Because, you know, again, to my point of Maine being the vacation land it is, you know, from inside the interior Maine, from the Lakes Region and, you know, Acadia and the Appalachian Trail and all that stuff. I mean, then you get to the coast, it's, you know, it's pretty cool when people are like, oh, you know, I'm coming to Maine. What? What can I do? And I'm like, I don't know, from Southern Maine to northern Maine is about an eight hour trip, yeah. So I go, you can do anything from, you know, skiing to go into the coast. And, I mean, there's just so much to do

Jacob Knowles 27:48
here, very Yeah, but two different, two different worlds, from the coast to inland. I mean, both beautiful,

Jeremy Perkins 27:53
yeah, yeah. I mean, just driving old route one is, is crazy. And it was funny, because I'm when I was first stationed, my first duty station was Key West. So I was at the bottom the southern most point, and we're pretty much at the northern most point. Yeah, so and then is this? This where you want to be for the rest of your life?

Jacob Knowles 28:14
This is where I'll be, yeah, permanently. Yeah. We'd like to get a camp up north or something, or a nice camp that we could go spend some time in the winters. Because winters, because I do have some time off in the winters where we could spend some time up there, ice fishing, some will be on the skiing and stuff. We'd love to, love to get up on moose head or something, yeah, somewhere up in that region, Greenville, yeah, no, knock it anywhere. I love the North Maine woods. Yeah.

Jeremy Perkins 28:35
It's, I did some hunting up here, and it's, you know, it's peaceful. There's nothing. Yeah, you could easily get turned around, but it's nice. It's nice. And you still, so you're still getting out there on your plane.

Jacob Knowles 28:48
Yep, I just got that brought it back a week or two ago. Yeah, we've got some early ice, which has been nice. The ice on the coast has been hit or miss for the last five or six years, yeah, but the last two, knock on wood, they've been pretty good for winter activities. We got some some snow and some ice, and I got the plane on skis right now, right up the road.

Jeremy Perkins 29:10
Actually, that's awesome, yep. And there's a, isn't there an ice or snow runway in New Hampshire? Have you

Jacob Knowles 29:16
got, yeah, Elton Bay, yeah. Have you made it? I haven't been there, but I've heard it's awesome. Everybody that goes there says it's awesome. So I should, it's not that, not a very far plane ride.

Jeremy Perkins 29:25
Yeah? It was funny because, you know, I watched some of the, some of the footage from last year. I guess they have a lot of slide offs, yeah, somebody crashed there.

Jacob Knowles 29:34
Yeah. There's usually some, a lot of activity. Do you get up north to do a lot of brook trout fishing? That's, that's my heart. Yeah, I love, love fishing for native brook trout.

Jeremy Perkins 29:43
But there's not much. There's not bad brook trout fishing over here. They don't know where we are, that's right. But, yeah, no, I actually got a chance to go out and do a little brook trout fishing for the first time. It never nice. Never did it, and it was a good time. A minute. It's kind of funny. When you talk to the game wardens up here, they don't care if you have a beer in the car or if you're carrying a rifle or anything. They just want to see what's in your cooler for fish. Yeah, like, what my nine year old could be driving a truck. But yeah, no, it's, it's good, it's, it's quiet, it's peaceful. Living up here, and you know, when we were going through town down there, seemed pretty busy. Yeah, traffic. Are there a lot more people

Jacob Knowles 30:32
coming up? It's just local traffic. Okay? Tourism slows down a lot up here in the winter. Yeah, do

Jeremy Perkins 30:37
you see a lot of more year rounders? Or it really slows down.

Jacob Knowles 30:41
We have more year Rounders now than we did post pre covid, yeah, but it's still, it's pretty quiet for the most part,

Jeremy Perkins 30:49
awesome, awesome. So you got the kids, the kids are gonna start getting into this, yep. Do you want it for them?

Jacob Knowles 31:00
I'm going to encourage them to do whatever they whatever they want to do. If they I don't think I'm going to talk my oldest son out of Yeah. So yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna help him every way I can. Yeah, in same for my my middle my middle kid, my son, and my daughter, Allie, if she wants to do it.

Jeremy Perkins 31:18
Yeah. So how much of the back end work. You know, Is your father still?

Jacob Knowles 31:23
Yeah, she's fishing full time. We're kind of fishing side by side. It's friendly competition now. And I haven't asked, Is your grandfather's No, my grandfather passed away a couple years ago. Was he still fishing up until then? No, no. He got hurt. He hurt his shoulder trying to save a boat that broke its mooring. Yeah, and his shoulder was never right since then. So he stopped fishing. Probably, I can't remember how old he was when he stopped. He stopped fishing full time, actually, when I was probably, like 16 years old, because he started going to me stern man. He was, like, my first official stern man. Interesting. Yeah. So from the time I was 16 to 18, so what that been in 1718, years ago, is, I guess, when he stopped, yeah,

Jeremy Perkins 32:03
it was, I was actually going to ask you a question around that. So when it comes to the license, they just have to be present on the boat. So like, when you get up there in age, yeah, he could, he could just be sitting on a bucket crew.

Jacob Knowles 32:14
He could continue to do that. But it's not in his blood. Yeah, yeah. He could never, ever sit down and watch his crew work. There's no way

Jeremy Perkins 32:21
that's, I mean, it's honorable, and it speaks the speaks to the craft. And obviously, you know him departing the industry opens up, well, hopefully a potential license for somebody coming in. I know it's like three to one or two to one or whatever, but it allows the next generation to come in and start working the fisheries and, yep, and being a part of that cool. So what, you know, let's talk about this boat, right? So what kind of drove you to want to do this? I know some, some people, you know, their boats reaching the end of the life, or, you know, it's really not working out for them. And then, you know, couple of good seasons or whatnot, or diversification. But walk me through how you were, you know, thinking about, how did this come all about?

Jacob Knowles 33:04
Yeah, it's something that I've always wanted to do, but it never really was a smart decision to do, because the lobsters, truthfully, don't really care too much if you've got a nice, shiny new boat, or if you've got an older boat, as long as the mechanical parts of the bones are good, which is what I've always had for boats, and this was way I was raised. Have have good traps. Have the best traps you can have, right? Put the best bait you can in them, and keep all the good mechanical parts of your boat good. And don't spend a fortune. You don't need to spend a fortune on your boat. Is kind of the way I was always raised. So I always wanted to build a new boat. But again, I was always raised with like my boat was working for lobstering and and truthfully, if I was just going to lobster fish for the rest of time, yeah, I would stay in that. My current boat right now, it's a great lobster boat, and it gets done 90% of what I want to do throughout the year. Maybe, maybe more like a probably be a little bit more efficient in this boat, the size and the speed. I can log more weight. I can be more mobile with my traps. So I will, I will increase my lobster catch a little bit with this boat. But it's not the main it's not the main advantage. We were honestly filming on the boat. Oftentimes we have multiple people, a camera guy, on the boat, or we have guests come up and want to, want to go to Hall, and I want to do more tuna fishing, halibut fishing. I want to do more fun things on the ocean, which, again, I could do in my current boat, and it's just not quite as comfortable. And then, like the bait fishing. It was a big thing. I recently in 2020, was able to 2019, 2018, somewhere in there, I was able to get my bait fishing license, which is hard to get now, but my boat is, like, on the smaller side of what I would like to have for bait, there's like, there's just, like, four or five things now, yeah, that would be so much. Nicer with this boat than than the boat that I'm in. In all of those four or five things added up together and then, like, the content alone of the build, like it's just, I'm excited to be here and build it and learn about it and share it. So it's another content angle, and it's been great content on YouTube. It's been fun, all right?

Jeremy Perkins 35:19
Well, you know, it's been a pleasure catching up with you. It's cool to be able to come up to your to your area and see it. Obviously, the best time to catch you is in the off season, for sure. But once this thing gets in the water, we got to, we got to get out here and shoot some content. It would be, let's go catch a tuna fish. Yeah, we'll bring Andy. Oh, fiberglass. This smells fish in the next one. Oh, I don't smell fiberglass anymore. I've been in this building for so long. But yeah, I mean, again, if anybody wants to follow you, where can they find you?

Jacob Knowles 35:48
It's just Jacob Knowles, K, N, O, W, L, E, S, on all platforms, awesome.

Jeremy Perkins 35:54
Well, again, thank you for diving deep into this and good luck in this next season. Thanks. Appreciate it. Yeah, no worries.