Episode 48: Interview with John Moline of the Alaska Halibut Fishing Event

Hello and welcome to the WWIA podcast. We're honored to have you join us in our mission to bring honor, connection and healing to America's combat wounded Purple Heart heroes.

If this is your first time listening to this podcast, we welcome you. If you're a returning listener, thanks for coming back.

Please be sure to tell others about our podcast and leave us a review if you're enjoying what you're hearing. Alaska is truly the last frontier filled with expansive beauty, bountiful wildlife and boundless adventures.

Every year for the past eleven years, our Purple Heart heroes have traveled to Seward, Alaska to partake in several days of world class fishing, sightseeing, exploring and more at WWIAS Alaska halibut fishing event. This is a unique and unforgettable experience for our combat wounded veterans.

On this latest episode of the WWIA podcast, WWIA founder and CEO John McDaniel welcomes the host of this stellar event, Mister John Moley.

John is the owner of current affair Charters and keen Eye fjords bed and breakfast in beautiful Seward, Alaska, where he expertly navigates the local waters to give people an elite and memorable fishing experience. John is also a modest but outstanding cook as he often prepares delicious meals for his guests with some of their fresh catches of the day.

He is a proud veteran of the armed forces, having served primarily in the US Navy and also in the US army reserves.

During his time in the service, he worked on electronics, communications and navigation systems and developed a love and skill set for fishing the coastal waters of Alaska that soon turned into a full time profession that he has continued for more than two decades. This is an outstanding episode that we're excited to share with you. So without further delay, let's jump into the conversation now.

Hi, I'm John McDaniel, founder and CEO of the Wounded warriors and Action foundation. And this is our podcast, honor, connect and heal.

Well, you know, I say this pretty much every time, but I'm going to say it again just because it's true. Very honored, you know, to have this great gentleman with us today, John Moline, welcome to the program.

Thank you. Good morning.

Good morning, yes, and so I'll set the stage real quick. You know, John has been supporting the foundation for at least eleven years. It might be coming up on twelve, but he lives up in Alaska.

He is a charter captain up there in the great state. And you're out of Seward, is that not right?

That's correct. Seward, yep.

Seward, Alaska. Yep. Been there, done that.

I was stationed up up in Alaska I was in Fairbanks for a while, and I did a permanent change of station and went down to the Anchorage area there to command. So I'm real familiar and love Alaska. What a great place. It really is.

But you are a charter captain, and the name of your charter business is current affair charters. Is that correct?

That is correct. Yeah. I changed the name of the company about four years. Four or five years ago.

Yeah. Okay. So I'm looking at a picture, and I love the pictures, man. I mean, of your event. And. And by the way, um, you know, it's.

It's quite a stretch to get our heroes from wherever they are up to Alaska. I mean, it's. It's. It is the last frontier, you know, and it is planes, trains, and automobiles. It's a, you know, it's a.

It's a very resource intensive. No pun intended, but, you know, it's a very resource intensive mission for us.

But, you know, I got to tell you, the smiles that we see, the stories that I hear, you know, that the results that you produce are just phenomenal, and I want to, you know, first off, John, thank you. You and I have never met.

I've wanted to get up there, but, you know, I started a family late in life, and, you know, things with the business, and I got a thousand excuses.

Understood.

I beg your pardon. I genuinely do.

But we've done really good at sending my staff, key staff and key people that are really important to the foundation up there to have that experience. And all of them say the same thing. They say, lifetime of memories, an amazing place.

You're an amazing captain, and I just want to thank you for all that you've done, because everybody goes home with a cooler full of meat.

You know, I see all these pictures of these, you know, halibut, and I want to get into talking about fishing in Alaska, and you're probably the best guy on the planet to do that with.

Well, you know, I do love. I love it. It's. To me, it's my hobby. It's not a job, it's not a career, it's a hobby.

And I was lucky enough to actually turn into making a living for me. So I get to do everything that I like and have a great time doing it.

Awesome. And you're also a veteran. I understand you were in the navy for just over ten years, right? And you're on active duty in the Navy. Is that true?

That's correct, yep. I was in for about seven and a half years. Got out for about a year and a half during that time I actually joined the army reserves.

You can did the two weeks active over in South Korea, came back, finished out that year, went back in the Navy after they stopped taking veterans back in and went to a position out on Adak, Alaska. Was in for another two years. So just over ten years. About ten and a half years active duty Navy. Yep.

Awesome. Well, and, and then, you know, what did you do in the Navy? I mean, what, what was your position? What. What did they train you to do?

I did electronics repair on the ship and out of, based out of San Diego. I worked with communications transmitters, receivers, crypto equipment, you know, to keep secure communications.

Worked on a few things with navigation. The first, basically gps was called sat nav, or satellite navigation.

They bombed me around on a helicopter from ship to ship when their system went down because of the. I was the only tech for a while amongst 17 vessels, so it was pretty good bouncing around from, from ship.

To ship, you know, as a, as a, as a.

As a captain myself, a six pack guy, you know, and a lifetime fisherman, you know, I grew up on a lake in, you know, in, in Wisconsin, and then I've been in Florida, you know, fishing the, you know, saltwater from the keys all the way up the, you know, into the, you know, panhandle, if you will. I mean, all over Florida, you know, and I've fished up in Alaska for three years, four years when I was up there, you know.

But when you combine a captain with, you know, some ability to. And understanding, you know, electronics as an example, you know, that's a.

I tell you what, man, that, I swear to God, that's the one thing that just always bamboozles me, man, with, with boats, because especially, as you know, in a saltwater environment, right. It's very corrosive. And, and if you can.

If you understand how to troubleshoot and, you know, and you understand, you know, wiring and, you know, and how, you know, how electricity and amperes and watts and all this other stuff, I mean, just throwing those words out there like, I know what I'm talking about, but I don't, you know, but if you can do that to troubleshoot electronics, you know, everything from.

Yeah, like you say, you know, your gps, you, you know, your clone ass system, whatever you got going there, radar to include just the mechanic, you know, the mechanical aspects of the vessel that, you know, from the battery to the starter to the ignition switch, all the lights and yada, if you can do that. Things like the billiage pump, you know, if you can get all that stuff straight and troubleshoot it without having to haul it in.

For an expert man, you are way ahead of the game as far as I'm concerned. As for, you know, and I imagine that you, you know, I assume what the Navy trained you to do is come in handy. Was that a fair assumption?

Yeah, very much so. With the Navy, especially with all the equipment, it was all about preventive maintenance.

Do everything you have to do to keep it in peak condition so you don't have failures. It's not one of those things where, you know, if something goes wrong, you can just pull over and stick your thumb out, wait for somebody to come by.

Right.

What kind of ship were you on, John?

Hmm, interesting. A frigate. That's what the French would say. I did some counter drug and counter terrorist operations with some of our french friends. Right.

And this is a long time ago. And the french commander who was a navy commander was the equivalent of a frog Mandez, you know, or he was a frogman. Not the equivalent.

He was a frogman equivalent of our navy seals. Right. The French have that. They have those guys, and he was classic French, you know, he's just. I love this guy. Francois Debour was his name, and he.

Yeah, and Francois was a frog man. And he used to pronounce, because the French would bring their frigates in to support certain missions that we were doing.

And of course, I had to go to Fort de France to check some of that stuff out. And anyway, Francois would pronounce the word frigate as a frigate.

He would say, just every time I hear the word frigate, frigate, I think of good old Francois. Deborah, I hope someday you listen in this, pal.

Thanks for, you know, all you did for, you know, our country, believe it or not, and way of supporting, you know, missions and catching bad guys. No, but not a lot of people know about that. But that's. That's what happened. Anyway, so. So tell us about you fish for halibut.

You obviously are chasing the darn salmon and the different types of salmon that are running around. Tell us about your experience and what you like to do and what's a typical day in the life of a charter captain up in Alaska?

Because you kind of got a short season, don't you?

And I had the boat, had to experience all that stuff. I just got off Adak, fishing out there. Fish are out there. Early season.

I had fished four or five years on my own boat and finally decided I'm sick and tired of being an electrician and having to work 98 hours a week for somebody else. You know, if I'm gonna work that kind of hours, I'm gonna be my own boss and enjoy what I do, so, sure.

My very first trip was actually April 15 and surprised a lot of people.

It was a great load of fish that we brought back in, and all the other charter captains and companies were walking down the docks, looking at the fish hanging up, and they're like, boohoo. We don't even normally start up for another three, four weeks. What are you doing? It's like, well, just got to know where to go catch fish. So.

Right.

Uh, it turned into a competition. The bigger companies started, uh, dropping our prices, you know, spring special, stuff like that.

So, typically my season now, I open up right around May 15, somewhere between the 10th and 15th.

Um, there's just really not enough tourism up there, uh, because the kids aren't out of school yet down here in lower 48, or as Alaskans say, well, down there in America, the kids are still in school, so, you know, that's kind of our joke up there, calling it down in America, so. But typically, May 15 this year, I shut her down a little bit early. Economic reasons.

Just wasn't a lot of people that had the funds to be able to go fishing. So, typically, I run to about September 10 or 15, somewhere near this year, I shut her down on the first.

So what, what, what? Let's talk about the species, right? So, first off, halibut. I mean, that. I think a lot of folks know what. What halibut is.

They probably see it in the store. But, I mean, these. These things are, uh, you know, they're just. They can get huge, like, close to 400 pounds.

Can't they actually up over that?

Okay, yeah, they can get monster, but most of the ones that everybody catches, the. The ones that are the best eaten anyway, are. You are usually about the. In a 60, 70 pound range. That. Does that sound about right to you.

As far as flavor, texture, all that good stuff, anything between. In my opinion, if it was up to me, I would not. I would not eat a fish that's bigger than 25 pounds.

Oh, wow. Okay.

15 to 25 pounders gives you a perfect one to one and a quarter inch thick filet. And it's kind of the same thing with the steak. It's.

It's kind of hard to get, the better cooked, just the way you want it without overcooking the outside when you start getting thicker.

Right.

A 50 pound fish, the main filet sections would be about two to two and a half inches thick, 100 pound fish, you're talking three, three and a half inch thick filet. So.

Right.

It's, you know, if people grow a garden, for instance, they don't wait until that carrot is three inches in diameter and a foot tall down on the ground and it's got a seed head on it. They don't want that great big monster thing.

They're going to pick that carrot when it's four, five, six inches long and it's nice and sweet, tender, juicy. That's the same thing with the fish.

Yeah.

It's kind of a toss up because people want to fill up their cooler and make that, make the trip worthwhile and bring fish home.

And we understand that typically people, you know, that 50, 60, 70 pound range, once you start getting over that, a lot of people that have done it before say, let's let that one go, and, you know, if things are good, but if they're not, you know, if they're not jumping in a boat for us that day, well, pretty much, it's kind of like putting a $10 in a slot machine in Vegas. You know, you might get, you might hit a winner, you might not.

So, you know, if you throw in $10 and you get a $20 winner, do you really play it back or, you know, do you stick that in your pocket and take it home? Because it's going to be a good eating fish.

So I went on a charter out of seward when my, when my dad came to visit me. I don't want to say it was probably the, for.

And the four of us went fishing on a seward, and then we went down to the canine. You know, we're, we're wrestling with the, you know, the biggest, the big salmon, the kings.

Anyway, we fish, you know, soldatna and a few other places, too. I mean, I love fishing, but, you know, we were aboard a vessel and it was a party. I say it was a party boat, but, you know, those things work.

Like, you got four of us, but the guys got room for like six or eight or whatever. So he takes another party of two, you know, whatever it is, right. I mean it just makes the most sense and thats what happened.

So we were, the four of us were on board and there was another party of two or three. I dont remember what it was.

But anyway, all of a sudden boom and were fishing for halibuts were deep, dropping the big lead weights as you know, big circle hooks, salted herring as I recall, and were just dropping this stuff down to 200 350ft or something like this. And all of a sudden boom its this guy's turn. His rod goes off and you know, you could tell it was a different fish like by the way it was pulling.

It's like pulling up as they say, the big piece of plywood off the bottom of the ocean floor when you get one of these big fish.

And so he gets it and he brings it up and I want to say I have a picture of it and don't quote me on it but you know they, it was a derby fish, right? So that's what you can, you can get into a, you know, you can get into these pools where you know it's a dirt, it's like a derby.

So you know, you say you give some money and you. I don't know how it works or I don't recall how it worked but the idea was you could enter this derby and, and some of the captains will get in it.

I'm sure a lot of them, you probably do too. But anyway, so it was 256 pounds when they, when they got it.

You know, when we got it in the boat and I was like, you're gonna get this thing in the boat man. So dude, dude takes a shot. Takes a. I think it was a, it was a 38. I think it was a 38. Like a bang stick and I wasn't ready for that either, you know.

But you get this thing next to the side of the boat and bam. You know, because you gotta kill it to get it in. Unbelievable man. 256 pound halibut.

And I was just like, I'd never, honest to God, I think to this day, you know, that is the biggest fish I've ever been that close to. That was just a monster fish, man.

Yep.

Monster.

Yeah.

You ever catch anything like that?

Yeah we did several times. My largest is 383 pounds.

Oh good lord. What do you do with that? Feed it to the dogs? I mean is it, I mean if it, you know, I mean if it's no good, is it good?

Can you, I'm sure you can eat it. It's a question if you would want to.

Right? It's still edible and everything. I didn't know so much at the time. A brand new beginner. I was really excited, you know, here's this huge trophy.

Oh, let's kill this thing. Makes great pictures and on and on and on.

Sat down to start eating some and said, well, you know, even though it kind of tastes like halibut, it's, it's real coarse, grainy. This is kind of like eating a 20 year old milk cow. So I guess this is going to be family fish.

When we fly back home, we're going to do a big, you know, deep fried fish fry so everybody will like that stuff. That, that's what it's good for. And that's kind of when I started saying, hey, you know, keep the, keep the smaller fish for the better eaten.

Matter of fact, the first four or five years I was in business, I told people flat out, you're probably going to catch a fish over 125 pounds on this boat today. And if you, if whoever catches that and brings it up, we'll get great pictures of it and stuff like that.

If you let it go, I'll give you half off your next trip.

Yeah, that's smart. So the big ones are the breeders anyway, aren't they? Are those the females, the bigger ones?

The largest male ever caught is 50 pounds, right? At least. So yes, it's true. No, they don't change sex. Once they get so big, they don't turn female.

They're, you know, sorry to put it this way, but they're either born male or female. That's it. That's nature. So the females are the bigger ones, the same as the eagles.

You know, the female eagle has to provide all the protein and energy to produce the egg and stuff like that. So typically, the female eagle is larger and. But the halibut, in reality, the main breeders and spawners are between 31 hundred pounds.

Those would be what you would consider your breeding age. Females, the larger fish, yes, they put out a lot of eggs, but a lot of them aren't so viable anymore.

Interesting.

Start thinking it's the same thing with the human species.

Sure.

You know, women, once they hit 50, 60 years old, yeah, they're still out there, but, well, they're not so fertile.

Right, right. Okay, interesting. And so I get, I gotta ask you, like, um, you know, you obviously, you live up there.

You been fishing up there as a, you know, professional for a long time. What is, in your opinion, the best fish for table fare? That, that up in, in Alaska, where you're fishing, that you could catch, catch or have caught.

Um, you know, all things being equal, what's that? Fish?

To me, the best eating fish up there is a rockfish.

Really.

Halibut is, uh. To me, is a non fish eaters fish. It doesn't taste like fish. It tastes like whatever you cook it with.

So if you like something like a mango, peach chutney on top.

Yeah, perfect.

If you like something with lime and pineapple, if you like thai, you know, with pineapple and pepper stuff, it tastes like whatever you cook it with.

So it's mild, right? I mean, it's just a mild fish.

Yeah. Anyway, it has no fish flavor whatsoever. It's just a white meat filler. But, I mean, it's very, very popular. It's not fishy.

Right.

To me, the rockfish is the best table fare. It tastes very similar to your snapper or your grouper, your small to medium sized grouper. It has a little bit of fish flavor. It's firm.

You know, it cooks up firm. It's a nice, flaky white meat, and it has a little bit of fish flavor to it.

So to me in the midwest, you know, you mentioned growing up in Wisconsin area.

Yeah.

The rockfish is like our saltwater crappies. If you pull a crappie through the ice, it's very hard to beat that for table fair.

Yeah. And like a walleye, too. I mean, I think where I grew up.

Exactly.

Still in a perch, you know? I mean, if you. If you.

If you talk to the folks that live up there, which I do a lot, and did live up there, visit up there a lot, you know, it's just hard to. It's hard to beat, you know, a walleye or a perch, you know, it's just phenomenal white meat, fresh water fish, but phenomenal white meat.

And that's what you're saying about the rockfish, right?

Yep. Well, we do have something common. And I haven't discussed this with you, but I was raised in northwest Wisconsin.

I'll be darn. I didn't know that. Where?

Lake Holcomb.

Lake Holcomb.

Yeah. Your camp is only about 40 miles from where I was raised.

You know what? That's how I got connected to you. Through Tommy Schenk. Yep.

Tom Schenck.

God dang, I knew it. Okay, say, oh, bogey's bar. I was like, holcomb. I know that. And, yeah, Tommy's there, and I was like, ding. So what'd you do? Going to. I love it.

So what'd you do go into the bar, meet Tommy, and he got to. He got the yak, and he's like, hey, I know this dude I was in the rangers with and yada, yada, yada.

And the next thing you know, we're sending heroes up to you. Is that the cliff notes?

Pretty much. It happened to pretty similar to that. Yep.

I came back down for deer season and visiting family, stuff like that, and just happened to walk into the bar with my cousin, you know, one night after hunting, and, you know, Tom served us up. I think we shot a couple games of pool, stuff like that. And Tom said, hey, you were. You were in the military, weren't you?

I said, oh, yeah, you know, because I'd already seen him for five, six years prior to that. He goes, yeah, you know what? Hang on here. And he starts looking around behind the bar, looking around, looking around.

He's like, dang, I know I got it somewhere here. And he finally found it. It was a business card.

Oh, cool.

And it was for you. And he put it on the bar, and he says, you know, I just. I just want you to. I'm not. I'm not asking for any commitment. Just check this place out.

Check out what this organization is. Maybe it's for you. I didn't think much about it. That was in November timeframe for the deer season here in Wisconsin.

And sometime around January, February, you know, going through my suitcase, just making sure everything was out, and it's like, oh, what's this? It was a business card laying in the bottom of the top pouch. You know, I was packing up to go on another trip. It's like, oh, wow.

Well, maybe I'll check this out. So I did. I went on a website, and I brought back a whole lot of memories.

That's one of the thing I miss most about being in the military is the camaraderie.

Right?

Experiences. But, yeah, I was introduced through your organization with. Through Tom Shank. I've seen him a couple times since then.

He's very happy and appreciative. He makes rods and reels and stuff.

You know, Chippewa river custom rods, Tommy Shank.

There you go.

There's. And there's the connection it with current affair charters. And that's how they find you on the website. Right?

If somebody wants to go up to Alaska, current affair charters. Current affair charters. Right?

Current affair charters. Charters with an app.

Okay, very good. Excellent. So our connection is Ranger schenck. Unbelievable, man. You know, I. Let me tell you this.

Let me tell you this story, because I've never told this story. Now that we're talking about, you know, Tommy. So I'm in the Florida Keys.

I like, I don't need a piece of paper to go do good. I don't need the government to sprinkle holy water on me and say I'm a charity to do this work.

And here's a news flash for you, for anybody who's interested. You don't need a, you don't need a piece of paper to go do good.

You need the piece of paper so that you can, if you decide to end up raising money in growing your organization in a charity, you need that piece of paper so that people can get a tax benefit. You know, that's one of the ideas of a charity. You know, somebody's donate money, you know, they, they get a tax break.

And you, as the, as the, you know, proprietor or the charity, don't have to pay taxes on that money that you got donated to you.

Right?

Right. That's, that's what the 501 C three status gains you as a charity, as a recognized charity by the IR's, the United States government. All right.

There's your paid political advertisement for the day. So I'm, I'm sitting there in the Florida Keys. It's, it's the foundation. I'm doing onesies at the time. Okay?

Right.

I'm in the Florida Keys. I have a property there.

And I, you know, I'm also have one here in Tampa Bay and, and, you know, the camp Hackett, you know, so I'm just doing this by myself.

You know, guys are getting chewed up bad. And so my buddies are calling me up going, hey, man, I got this. But I got this dude, you know, his name's Humahama. You know, super guy.

You know, he's in Miami as an example. Why don't you, you know, why don't you give him a call and see if, you know, you can get him out, you know, fishing or something.

I said, okay, roger that. So the website was viable, and I was doing this, you know, by myself, you know, basically. And so the phone rings. I'm in the floor keys.

I didn't have a mission going on. I was just kind of getting my gear together.

I remember sitting on the porch, the phone rings, I pick it up, and that guy on the other end goes, is this John McDaniel? I said, it is. He goes, hey, Johnny introduces himself, you know, I'm Tom. I'm Tommy Schenk. He is. Were you in the Rangers? And I go, yes, I was.

He goes, which. Which battalion were you in? I said, third battalion. He goes, what company? And you know, these questions. Who was your first sergeant?

You know all this stuff, right? So I get all the right answers. Finally, I'm getting a little bit, you know, like, okay, where's this going? Sort of thing?

And he goes, well, I was in the. I was in the same company with you. I remember you. And I go, oh, okay, perfect, man. What's going on?

And so that's, he starts telling me, listen, I saw an article. He says, I saw an article about you, you know, in on Wisconsin outdoors. He goes, I got. I go, I remember the article. They did.

They did an article about me, you know, helping combat wounded veterans. Yep, they sure did. Tommy read the article, found me somehow, called me up, chatted me up.

And Tommy was like the first guy in Wisconsin to actually reach out and offer. Not just offer assistance, but bring it. Tommy would deliver.

He would fish all winter long, stockpile fish, bring it to camp, you know, donated rods, you know, brings his dog pippa to, you know, to support our hunting events, you know, just a great american. And he. That's how that conversation went. He was like the first dude who ever reached out to me from Wisconsin.

And now Wisconsin, some 18 years later, is the foundations most vibrant state. If you are tracking it by the number of activities and the goodness that those activities are producing, it's a very, very vibrant state.

So shout out to Tommy.

Yup, absolutely. I've been watching. Every year or so I go onto the site and I see the different events that are coming up. It's amazing, the growth.

I want to congratulate you on that. It takes a lot of effort. It takes a lot of really, really good hearted people to make that happen.

And you're not getting. You're not kidding. And here's a shout out to everybody.

Right, exactly. Everybody that's involved.

That's right.

Thank you so much.

Yes, thank you for what you're doing. They're all volunteers, you know, we have never. And here's the thing. This is, this is the thing. And you're the classic example. We didn't ask you.

I didn't, the foundation didn't find you and say, hey, would you help? We don't do that. We never have and we never will. It's all organic growth. The conduit in this case, your case, was Tommy.

And Tommy didn't pressure either. He's like, hey, here's his business card. Check it out, you know, sort of thing.

And when you got around to it, you looked it out, looked at it, you're like, hey, I'm going to give these dudes a call. Right? And the next thing you know, we're delivering combat wounded purple recipients up to, you know, up to Seward, Alaska.

So you can go out, you know, in America's in the last frontier, and just go rip some lips and have an amazing time.

Absolutely no agenda, no nothing.

It just, you know, I know that for a fact that when I wind down in the fall and I get to go spend time out there in the wild, just sitting in the woods listening to the bird sherp, watching the squirrel play around, I am so relaxed. It allows me to come to peace and come to terms with a lot of things that are going on and have gone on. Yeah, it's.

It's spiritual, it's physical, it's emotional. Just getting back in touch with nature. A lot of people forget just how much that means.

And a lot of times, being a fishing charter captain out there in the water, you know, I laugh and joke and have a good time with these people. And even sometimes I forget that it's not always about a big fish. They just want to go out there and enjoy the scenery. They want to see some whales.

They want to catch a fish. It doesn't have to be a monster all the time. They just want to go out there and get back in touch with it and have a good time with it.

And, you know, here I am. You know, if we have a bad day catching, you know, we don't catch that much fish.

Out of everybody on the whole boat, I'm the one that feels worse because I should have been able to do better for him. But, you know, not everybody can have a gangbuster day every day.

You know, you make a really good point.

I, you know, for, for, for guys like, you know, me and you, that, you know, and I think the heroes, too, you know, that, you know, a lot, a big part of it is just this, this idea of, you know, reconnecting, you know, with nature, that. That's certainly. That is certainly a big piece of it.

Absolutely. Yep.

When you start. But when you start layering some other things on there, and I'll give you an example.

And I mean, other things, like an organization, an entity like the WWI or.

I know others are doing it as well, but when an organization is bringing a leadership component to it, and they're not asking you as the client to do anything other than say yes and pack your bag and follow the operations order that we wrote, the best you can get on a plane, go someplace and do something. And in this case, they're going up to one of the, you know, the most pristine and wonderful places in the world.

You know, that's why they call it the last frontier. I mean, it will blow you away.

Yes.

And, yeah, and so you get to go do that. But, you know, nobody's asking for anything. We're not asking you to do anything besides show up. You know, meet these people.

And, you know, psychologically, you know, it's got to be. I know it. It's not got to be.

It is impactful when people who you don't know, are giving of their resource, sharing of their time, their expertise, for no other reason than to say thank you and as to be an enabler in your case and in many, all the other cases out there, an enabler for them, a pathway back to nature, a pathway back to, you know, connection with their fellow, you know, service members. And when you start layering those things together, that's where we came up with honor. Connect. Heal.

Yep.

You know, there's healing in the. In that. In honoring what they did.

There's healing in the connective, you know, the connectivity, if you will, and connections to nature and connections to people and connections to each other and all that, there's a. There's a healing component to that. I mean, when you get. When they get back home after that amazing event, you know, they.

You've just provided some memories for the rest of their life.

Yep.

It's, you know, they can't change that.

It is. It is amazing to see the change.

Yeah.

In people over the five days that. That they're up there on my event. Yeah. A lot of times when they show up there, they're, you know, a little bit hesitant.

You can see some of the pain in their eyes. You know, if they're going through some things, it takes about a day to start loosening up.

And it's amazing how, you know, I mentioned that I missed the camaraderie of being on active duty.

Yeah.

Just the familiarity. It doesn't matter what service you were in or where you were, what you did.

Right.

A lot of people miss that. And when you get a group of four or five or six together that have similar, you know, experiences. Yeah.

It's amazing how quickly you see them become comfortable. Start smiling, laughing, and joking, having a good time. And to me, that's what it is. It's, let's show these people a good time.

Let them come around at their own pace. Don't push anybody. Laugh, joke. Have a good time, everybody. Let's eat some good food. Home cooked fish. This is some of the fish you just caught. Today.

I'm going to show you how to cook it. It's a really simple recipe. Try this.

Mm hmm. You do great with that. Your reputation precedes you as a, you know, as a, as a. And I've, I've seen your stuff on Facebook. I comment on a lot.

You know, you, you really, you. And I share that as well. And I love to cook, and especially seafood.

Like, if you said to me, like, okay, hey, you know, you got three things to cook here, you know, and tomorrow's your last day on the planet, you know, one of those things I'm going to cook, I guarantee, is a piece of whitefish. You know, love cooking, you know? You know, fish the way I like it, you know, and it's, it's just, it's delicious protein.

It's even better when, you know, when I, you know, and I can say I caught it, but. Yeah, that's pretty neat, man. You got it. I mean, that's essentially the formula. I mean, that's it. It's not magic.

Right.

It's, you know, and when you have, I think last count, we had 42 missions. This year, we're closing in on 42. It might be.

Might be a little more than that because we added a couple late runners here, but, you know, that's a lot, you know, and it's a lot, you know, to keep all that going. And the staff is very busy, you know, and, of course, I'm always coming up with new ideas and things that I think, you know, help us become stronger.

And so everybody's very, very busy, and we try to make all that work that goes into this thing just transparent for you, the host, you know, although you guys are involved from the get go and the planning. But, you know, my team tries to make it an easy lift for you because we know that when the heroes show up, it's game on, you know, for you. And you.

You prepped and planned and, and got all your stuff together and your kit and your fishing equipment, your boat, your home, you know, all these things. Your community, you got energized.

You know, there's a ton of work that goes into it, but, you know, if your heart's in it, I mean, that's the difference right there, John. I mean, we didn't ask you to do this. You found us and said I wanted to do it. That's a volunteer, right?

And I have to compliment your staff. They do a phenomenal job arranging all the travel and picking out people to come up there. It's an honor to me. It's an honor to be able to do this.

Yeah, well, you're doing it great, buddy. You really are. I'm proud of you. I really am. And is there anybody on your team, in your community that you want to.

Shout out, even with no assistance from anybody else? I made it clear from the get go that if you were able to get those, those warriors to Seward, Alaska, 100% of everything would be covered by me.

Yeah.

Fishing, their lodging, their fish processing for the airplane, 100% of everything would be covered by me. I started talking to a few different people. The American Legion up there. Seward Post five is one of the most active american legion posts in Alaska.

And I'm going to say for a small post nationwide, they've got to be in the top 10%. As far as their actions, their activities, their donations, everything else, they're very, very active group, and they help out quite a bit.

They have a Friday night ribeye steak dinner. They donate those for the wounded warriors.

Their whole mission is active duty first, then veterans, and then veterans, families and children, youth and community, in that order, for who they help out. And I very, very seldom is anybody turned away. And it's not because of financial.

It would be from something that, you know, they come in too many times asking for assistance. It becomes habitual, and then they're not turned away. People actually go to their house and help them do something to help in a different way.

So, I mean, that's how committed the people in that post are to helping people out.

American Legion, post five out of Seward. Right. God bless you guys. And of course, we appreciate you.

It's a family organization. You've got the post, which is the active duty. You have the auxiliary, which in history was the female spouse.

That's right.

You have the sons, American Legion, which is the male descendants. But things have changed over the past few years. So, you know, there's. It's not just male and female. You know, you can be either sex in either.

In either one of those. Yeah.

Just a great community of support there. And one of the more magical places.

I took my sister and her first husband, they flew into Alaska when I was up there, and we went to a little place called Port Fidalgo in the Prince William Sound. And it was one of the places that the Exxon Valdez incident did not touch. It was pristine. And I met a guy, I don't remember where he was.

Out of Homer, I think, maybe. Anyway, who had a. A piece of property in Port fidalgo. The only way you could get there was by plane or by boat. That was it.

And float plane, you know, there's no airport.

And he had a little fishing boat and a shack, literally a shack on the beach and then a geodesic dome about two or 300 meters up the side of a mountain. It was crazy, man. And so I did this adventure.

I won't bore you with the details, but we went fishing, and I remember Frank, my sister's husband, at the time, he was just from Minnesota. And we're out there doing this thing, and you just see, he's one of those guys that had never. He's an outdoorsman.

He could do a lot of climbing and things like this, but he just kept saying the same thing. He would go, wow. Phenomenal. Just. Just wow.

Exactly. I still do that. Phenomenal on my boat every day. The view of my office window is just terrible, you know?

Yeah, I bet. No, I know. And I was just like, you know, and it was just like, that was that. That was. He was expressing what I had been feeling and just wasn't.

Or rating it, you know, for my whole time up there, because every time you turn around in Alaska is another one of those. Wow, phenomenal. Because you can't. You can't make it up.

I mean, nature's landscape and that, the topography and all of the splendor and grandness and wide open spaces and. Oh, my goodness, is that a. It's an amazing place. Man, when I was up there, I was. I was just knocking the bottom out of it, like, as often as I could.

I was. I was hunting, fishing, exploring, and I just. Man, I had a wonderful time.

So I'm, you know, it's great to be connected with you and share some of those memories and those stories, John.

It's a. It's a phenomenal place. I agree. I. I just got back down here to Wisconsin about ten days ago and, you know, I already missed it. I was raised.

Oh, you're, you're in Wisconsin right now.

I am, yep.

Awesome. Awesome. Well, you gotta go see Tommy.

Well, yeah, I got it. I gotta wait for the temperatures to cool down a little bit so I can do a little archery hunting.

Are you gonna go hunt?

Oh, absolutely. Oh, yeah.

Well, good, good. Well, hey, man, if you, if you, if you knock one down, you guys send me a picture.

All right. Yeah. I'm not a hunter. I'm a meat hunter.

Yeah.

I love, you know, year and a half old, two and a half year old right in there. Corn fed. Yep.

I know. Nothing better than a, than a venison tenderloin or backstrap, man. I mean, that's just, that's phenomenal.

Cooked in brown mushroom gravy with Yukon gold potatoes. Oh, come on.

Yeah, yeah.

No, I do this, I don't do it very often because it's a reduction sauce, but it's an amazing, it's got juniper berries in it, oranges, dehydrated cherries, orange juice, tarragon, all these wonderful things in this reduction. And it simmers for a while.

It reduces, you strain it, and then at the last minute you whisk in like a stick of unsalted butter into this, into this concoction. Pull out half of the, you know, plump cherries and use that as the garnish. Drizzle the sauce over the top of your tenderloins or back strap.

There's not a, there's not a person in the room that's not licking their plate. Telling you the truth, man, I've seen it many, many times and they're like, that's venison. You go, that's venison.

It is.

You know, that's unbelievable, man. Unbelievable. Well, you are a great american. I'm going to give you the last whack at the pinata here.

John, is there anything you want to share with us that you know, that you'd like to.

Yeah, I'm actually going to put in a plug for Captain Jack's seafood processing in Seward, Alaska.

Awesome. Tell us about Jack.

All eleven years, Captain Jack's, they vacuum seal and freeze the fish. They box it up for the airplane. They've done 100% donation for every pond of fish that we've caught every year for eleven years.

Wow. Captain Jack's, I love it. Captain Jack's seafood locker.

You can also buy stuff from them.

Oh, you can ship it?

Oh, yeah, yeah. If you want.

Can I get like, do you think they got. Do you think they got, like, a king crab?

Yes.

Okay.

I'm doing King crab, King salmon, silver salmon. You know, it's a little more expensive than getting it from Costco or something like that, but, you know, it's coming right there from those waters.

Fresh.

Absolutely. Captain Jack Seafood locker.

Yep.

And for their seals like that, they actually buy that fish from the fishermen and fillet themselves and package it themselves while it's still fresh, and then it's frozen. The fish that we catch on a daily basis is blade and frozen within 12 hours. You're not going to get any fresher fish anywhere.

So that's awesome.

There's a plug for that, and.

Awesome.

I just want to say thank you for sending all those people up. I've met a lot of great people, had a great time.

I think one of my most memorable conversations out there on a boat about seven or eight years ago, I was walking around a boat baiting hooks and stuff like that, catching fish, and we're doing pretty good. We're having a pretty good day. And there's this guy named John on the boat.

One of the warriors went up, and I said, so basically, you know, what's your story? What happened to you? And he goes, well, you know, I played catch with an rpg, and I lost. I looked at him, I said, what do you mean you lost?

Well, you know, I'm missing some ribs over my heart and my elbows, stainless and stuff like that. And I said, well, we figured out this rig to help you, you know, with this Velcro strap and stuff to help hold her out.

Right now you're hooked up to about a 70 pound halibut in one of the most beautiful places on the planet. Maybe you ought to change the way you look at it. I would. I would say, nice catch. You're still here.

Yeah.

He just kind of looked at me like, wow. Never thought about it that way. But, yeah, you're right. So shout out to John over there in Michigan. If he hears this, he'll know who he was.

Right on. Yeah. Their resilience is incredible. It's. It's, it's. It's. It's inspirational. You know, it really is to be around them.

That's, you know, and if it wasn't for me, quite frankly, I don't talk a lot about that. But that. That's a huge.

That's a huge piece for me, is just to be around Americans, great Americans who serve their country, who, you know, were actually wounded in combat and.

And made their way through it and to be part of their healing journey or they're part of, part of that, you know, expressing my personal gratitude for what you did, for being, you know, essentially in the wrong place at the wrong time because you were ordered to be there.

Absolutely.

You know, and. Right. And just, and just being brave enough to be there and do that, knowing, you know, what possibly could happen to you.

Right. I, sir, I signed that same bottom line. No, I was not put in that type of position. And that's just my way of saying thank you.

You know, you did what you said you were going to do, you carried on with it, but thank you.

That's.

Thank you so much.

Absolutely. That's it, man. I don't think. Yeah.

And then for all the guys out there and gals out there who didn't serve for whatever reason, you know, I mean, they was all volunteer army, you know, exactly. The last. Laughter the last draft we had was, you know, I think, in Vietnam.

So, you know, but there are many, many of them are supporting the foundation, you know, to, as a way of expressing their gratitude.

And I think it's extremely, well, I know it's extremely gratifying for them as well, those that didn't serve to be able to rub elbows with some of these great Americans who did bleed in our nation's uniform.

Exactly.

And came back to live to tell about it. But, yeah, that's what this is about.

We got to keep the foot on the gas pedal here and keep doing what we can to improve our missions, expand our services so that we, you know, that we can continue to help them because, you know, this is like a lifetime contract, man. As far as I'm concerned, you go off and get wounded, you know, the foundation's here for the rest of your life, man.

I mean, this is, and it's not as, you know, it's not just about hunting and fishing, you know, it's about the relationships, you know, and, and that this idea of, you know, feeling good about what you did and we're trying to, you know, exactly the healing, you know, that's right.

Showing somebody that, you know, you can't just sit around Boohoo and about, you know, you got injured. You can still enjoy this stuff.

You might have to do things different than you did before you were injured, depending on what happened, but it's still there, it's still available and you can still enjoy it.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, John, thank you very much. John Moline from Current affair charters up there and Alaska and Sewer, you're out of suit.

Your business is out of Seward, right? Yes, it is out of Seward. Okay. So folks, know how to get a hold of you. Thanks for all you do. God bless you.

And we appreciate your service to our country while you're wearing our two different uniforms, our Navy uniform and our army uniform. So, John, thank you for all you do. God bless you. You're helping change lives, brotherhood.

Thank you. Appreciate it. Okay. Have a great day, sir.

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