How to Catch a MUSKIE (Muskellunge) | Tackle & Tips 2021

How can you catch the fish of 10,000 casts? Many say "luck" but if that's the case how are there professional muskie anglers? Pete Przepiora aka Polish Pete came on to Gearbox Talk to share some muskie fishing tackle and tips. Polish Pete explains the importance of upsizing your lures for muskie fishing in the cold months, casting and retrieving speed for muskie, how he approaches choosing lure colors for muskie, and more!

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Gear Mentioned:
Live bait - 12" sucker minnows Bucktail baits

Mepps Musky Marabou


- Mepps Magnum Musky Killer In-Line Spinner


Mepps Musky Killer In-Line Spinner

Musky Mania Jake

River2Sea Whopper Plopper 130

Joe Bucher TopRaider


Show Notes:
Polish Pete's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/polishpetep/
Omnia's Website: https://www.omniafishing.com/
Pete's Other Gearbox Talk Episode: https://youtu.be/UJG3qXefXxE

Transcription:

Brad: leave nothing for tomorrow which can be done today Abraham Lincoln said that you probably already knew that but you may have missed the second half of that quote which says and henceforth you should watch the president's day Gearbox Talk episode about presidential firearm history hey look like honest abe i would not lie to you okay he didn't say that but i bet he would have for this surprise monday episode of Gearbox Talk we have firearms historian Logan Metesh back on the show he's ready to highlight some of the most interesting firearms in presidential history lots of presidents have been into guns ranging from Washington all the way through obama who single-handedly and yet indirectly sold more guns than any president before him i digress Logan is going to share insights into George Washington's famed pistol collection theodore roosevelt's double rifle and the pistol responsible for the most famous duel in american history in which a sitting vice president shot a founding father if you enjoyed my shot show episode with Logan you are in for a serious treat if you missed that one you have some catching up to do alright now Lincoln also said to make your time count so let's get after it this is Gearbox Talk with Logan Metesh

Logan Metesh you're already back on Gearbox Talk how's it going man

Logan: it goes how are you

Brad: doing well i'm excited to have you here we're going to talk about presidential firearms today are you ready

Logan: i am more than ready my friend

Brad: i know you always come like super prepared you got a degree in this stuff too so yeah you know uh alright man so a lot of presidents have had guns i mean whether we're talking about Washington Jackson roosevelt jfk obama like there's a lot of presidents whether no matter what side of the aisle you're on you probably got somebody on your side that had a firearms collection and uh for for the sake of you know president's day here you and i thought it'd be fun to take a look back at some of the more impressive maybe not collections but just pieces and interesting facets in history here look at some standout pieces including a set of dueling pistols um used by we're gonna bring a vice president into play here and this is mostly because i'm obsessed with Hamilton we're gonna talk about the Hamilton Burr pistols but you've got some other stuff man let's dive in and talk a little bit about the uh the George Washington and Andrew Jackson tie with that pair of pistols you told me about

Logan: yeah absolutely the the Lafayette Washington Jackson pistols so uh the Marquis de Lafayette which of course if you're familiar with revolutionary war history you're familiar with the Marquis helped solidify our relationship with france and and the involvement in us becoming a country and the Marquis viewed George Washington kind of as uh as a father figure and that worked well for George because he didn't have any kids um and so the Marquis Lafayette actually purchased a beautiful pair of silver mounted flintlock pistols and gave them to George Washington during the revolutionary war and it said that Washington had him with him during the awful winter at valley forge and at monmouth and and finally at our our victory in yorktown in 1781 and those pistols were uh incredibly important to George um and he he cherished them you know for for the rest of his life and he passed in 1799 and of course he didn't have any kids so things got divided up and ended up with cousins and and nephews and stuff like that uh and they made their way down the line until they were actually presented to Andrew Jackson another president of the united states and the Marquis de Lafayette came back through the united states in 1826 uh to have kind of an anniversary tour of the united states and one of the things he did was he went and visited Andrew Jackson at the hermitage in tennessee at his home there and Jackson referred to the pistols as sacred and holy relics he he really held them in high regard and he had a bit of a surprise lined up for the Marquis at one point uh he had the pistols brought it out and he showed them to him and it was also kind of his way to verify the story and he handed the guns to the Marquis and said you know do you recognize these or he said yeah absolutely you know these are the guns that i gave to my friend George Washington um and so it was it was a really cool moment to kind of solidify all of that um and then when Andrew Jackson died he actually bequeathed the pistols back to the Lafayette family and so you've got this amazing connection between George Washington's you know quasi-son and then two presidents of the united states and you know and when you factor in that Lafayette actually named one of his kids George Washington Lafayette i mean it's there's an amazing connection there and those pistols uh sold for more than a million dollars they sold at christie's in 2002 they were purchased by purchased by the mellon foundation and they were actually given to fort ligonier which is uh in ligonier pennsylvania outside of pittsburgh and they are on permanent display there and i have been fortunate enough to have the opportunity to not only see those pistols but actually to have them taken out of the case and actually hold them in my hands and examine them and uh and really get a chance for some hands-on history

Brad: that's awesome man uh i was going to ask you it's so tough to put a price on something like that but you you do a lot of this in your spare time too of looking and assessing and evaluating i was kind of curious what they would sell for i have to imagine 2002 is actually a long time ago you know it's kind of crazy

Logan: yeah 19 years ago

Brad: yeah it's like it doesn't feel like it is for me personally i'm like oh yeah oh oh yeah i remember what i was doing in 2002 and i'm like that was a long time ago but i can only imagine that the value would have gone up there oh yeah Lafayette uh it's it's amazing that he even made it back uh i don't know how much you're how familiar you are with his but he spent a lot of time imprisoned in the french revolution because he went back and it's interesting to me of how much he still cared about Washington even though uh Washington ended up denying initial support to to the french in that battle and it to me it speaks a lot of George Washington that you know despite the fact that the americans didn't hold up the treaty uh they dropped you know the statement of neutrality as as they say on on the uh mic drop from the musical but you know there was a lot more debate there than happened in the musical i told you that i read the Hamilton um biography this summer and there's a lot of focus on on on that and it's interesting to me that um you know Washington meant enough to Lafayette that that uh circling back he still still cared so much for the guy you know to me it says a lot about his character uh i'm speaking to Hamilton we got to talk a little bit about another set of pistols uh the famous set of pistols uh with vice president aaron Burr give us the rundown on um these pistols i know you and i we we talked a little bit about them on restless native too another great show if anybody wants to check that out with Logan but for the Gearbox Talk listeners here uh talk a little bit about that that collection

Logan: sure yeah so the Hamilton Burr pistols i mean it's probably the most well-known duel uh in history and so they're the most famous dueling pistols in history and they were made by a guy named robert wagdon um and he was known for his dueling pistols i mean there was an entire culture around dueling and so you have industries that crop up around uh around cultures and he was the guy to make a set of dueling pistols um and he had he had teamed up with john burton uh shortly before he retired uh he retired in 1803 the duel takes place in 1804 the pistols were actually purchased uh and owned by Hamilton's brother-in-law and they were used in this duel and then they were used again later in life uh in in history uh to actually end up leading to the death of Hamilton's son but uh but there's an amazing history to those pistols because they were the preeminent type of dueling pistol uh and they were used in this conflict they were 54 caliber uh beautiful guns um beautifully cased set at some point in their life one of the guns was converted to percussion from the original flintlock configuration um and then they were passed down you know they went through family history and then i believe it was around 1930 they were actually purchased by the manhattan bank which has its ties to its beginnings with aaron Burr so it all kind of comes full circle uh and those guns are are owned uh still by that bank but today we know it as jpmorgan chase

Brad: isn't it kind of crazy somebody be like hey i think i'm going to change one of these historic firearms like even in the moment you would think somebody be like hey i don't think you should mess with those it's kind of a piece of history

Logan: well what's the story there yeah and it's it was not uncommon for people to update stuff uh as the technology came out um and and i believe the guns were converted somewhere like in the late 1830s or early 1840s so uh the duel was still you know fairly recent you know within the last 30 years 30 30 40 years um so you know people don't tend to necessarily think of history being you know 40 years ago i mean we look at it now 40 years ago is 1981 uh which is hard to believe but um so i i don't think they viewed them uh you know quite as that holy relic like uh like Andrew Jackson had viewed the the Washington guns before

Brad: right right let's let's jump ahead a little bit um i know you've got uh teddy roosevelt you know quite the collector of firearms what presidential pieces can we talk about owned by by teddy

Logan: yeah so teddy had a ton of guns i mean he was he was you know a gun guys gun guy big time um and he he kept a a beautiful pearl handled uh fn 1900 pistol uh on the nightstand in the white house um he had tons of winchester lever action rifles they were by far his favorite gun um he took crates and crates and crates of winchester guns and supplies with him when he went on safari in the early 1900s to africa but he owned a lot of beautifully embellished and engraved stuff too uh he owned a double rifle from frederick adolf that was in 500 450 nitro express so big game hunting rifle um presented to him in in 1910 and it was beautifully engraved by rudolph cornbreath and and for folks who know uh gun engravers cornbread is one of those big names that really stands out his work is uh is instantly recognizable uh he did a lot of work for colt uh and a lot of work for private commissions as well and one really neat thing on on this double rifle is that it's got the the presidential seal on each one of the barrels yeah

Brad: where did that gun sit today

Logan: that gun is actually at the nra national sporting arms museum at the bass pro shops headquarters in springfield missouri

Brad: oh is it okay cool um what i i'm kind of curious on like does stuff like that ever go to market or is it mostly holed up in museums now like i'm leading into asking you what that a gun like that would be worth on um today but i'm also kind of curious on like how much of this has kind of made its way to private collectors versus museums

Logan: right you know there's a pretty decent balance i would say between stuff that's in museums and stuff that's privately held um you know there have been some teddy roosevelt guns that have sold just within the last couple of years uh and they went you know from one private collector and they went to auction and and went to another private collector so there's there's still stuff coming to light um guns that are being identified uh to to presidents and other historic figures and you know and if you've got a big enough name like teddy roosevelt and stuff you know those those guns can sell for six figures uh you know and the sky's the limit depends on just how bad someone wants it

Brad: once they go into the museum circuits do they kind of stay there is that i mean is it uncommon for one to come back into a private collection

Logan: uh if if the museum owns it yeah and if the museum's worth worth uh anything uh then yeah once it's in in the museum it will not uh go back into private hands however uh because those guns are expensive and museums tend to have smaller budgets a lot of times you'll see the the really impressive historic pieces are actually still privately owned and they're on loan to the museum uh from wealthy individuals so you get kind of the best of both worlds there

Brad: right right man that's all the notes i had on my presidential knowledge of firearms what other any other ones come to mind that are noteworthy in celebration of a little president's day here

Logan: sure yeah another one that i really like uh is a winchester model 21 that was presented to dwight eisenhower it's got his initials dde on the trigger guard it's also got five stars uh in gold signifying his his generals rank and it was actually given to him uh by the president of coca-cola they were friends and they were hunting buddies and uh so that was a gift to him and so i i you know it's something you don't necessarily think about you know coca-cola and a general president and they're they're hunting buddies and one gives a shotgun to the other i just i think that's kind of cool and uh and and you know and then you've got guys like jfk you know probably the the the last individual with a certain political party affiliation after his name that was also a gun guy and you know he he was very involved in firearms you know being a world war ii vet and you know there's a great photo of him in the oval office holding you know an m16 which was you know coming into early adoption in production there and that was something he was interested in um so there's a lot of neat stuff and uh you know ronald reagan was also very interested in firearms and he actually had a a modern made kentucky rifle was presented to him by a texas gunsmith it was presented to him in the oval office and it was actually featured on the cover of american rifleman magazine when it was given to him um but the little slip up with that is the gunsmith didn't realize that reagan was left-handed uh and kentucky rifles like that it's it's very pertinent to have them uh for the right person otherwise you're having all that ignition go off right in your face but right still it's a beautiful gun and reagan loved it just just the same so

Brad: yeah how many pieces like that are gonna get shot anyways

Logan: well yeah exactly yeah

Brad: yeah i can only imagine what what a piece like that uh you know one of a kind absolutely one of a kind it goes into what you were saying a second ago uh you know high six figures and it's not uncommon for some of the stuff to hit more than a million dollars in in an auction so awesome man any other presidential nods

Logan: uh i think those are probably the big ones uh well speaking of big ones uh we'll talk about grover cleveland who was not only a big man but he had big guns uh colt made their only eight gauge shotgun for grover cleveland and you know if you've got shotgun guys you know if you're running three inch high brass and a 12 gauge that that kicks pretty good and yeah every shot at 10 gauge that kicks pretty good too um but you're you're running with the really big boys when you go up to uh the eight gauge and yeah so they made it for cleveland i i don't know that he ever shot it um but he's he was certainly of the stature that i think if if someone could have withstood it it would definitely be grover cleveland

Brad: i didn't know about that that's really cool hey man give a little shout out to your show um and talk about how people could find you if anybody's nerding out here it's like oh my gosh this is so much cool knowledge uh Logan has an awesome podcast that i want to give i'll get a little love to here at the end just so you can find more awesome stuff like this

Logan: yeah so it's the High Caliber History podcast um you can find it on all your main platforms google podcast itunes spotify there's a video version on youtube just search for High Caliber History podcast where we talk about all things uh firearms and history and museums and where all those worlds intersect and and come together a lot of great guests different museum curators uh firearm company historians um and so on and so forth lots of good stuff there uh like Brad said if you've enjoyed this little snippet uh i think you'll you'll enjoy the rest of my show

Brad: yep and i'll give a shout out to the other show that we did if you haven't seen our other episode on uh on Gearbox Talk awesome episode we did a shot show 1921 which was fantastic super fun show and then logan's also been on my restless native podcast dude we'll put all those links into the show notes i thank you for coming on and and shedding a little wisdom for us a little knowledge that's right

Logan: thanks for having me Brad it's been been really great

Brad: alright take care man thank you thank you Logan be sure you check out logan's podcast High Caliber History it's awesome he's a great guy he's a great storyteller and he's got something really cool if you're into gun history check out that podcast for sure and thank you for dropping into this special edition of Gearbox Talk i want to remind you dwight eisenhower said never waste a minute thinking about people you don't like you're still here so i'm inclined to think you like this show so go ahead and subscribe subscribers get to see tons more shows like this and we're talking tactics and gear all as it relates to hunting fishing hiking camping the firearms all of that good stuff that you like so hit that subscribe button alright that's it for me today i'm out