Fly Navarro’s expertise in the fishing industry is unparalleled, having fished off the coasts of North and South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia. He has caught numerous big game fish, including blue marlin, swordfish, and tuna, and has gained a reputation as one of the top fishermen in the world.
Aside from his passion for fishing, Fly Navarro has also made a significant impact in the marketing industry. His company, Fly Zone Fishing, has helped launch and promote fishing events all over the world. He has also been instrumental in creating new revenue models for content creators through his streaming service, RTH TV.
Fly Navarro’s success is not only due to his expertise in fishing and marketing but also his ability to adapt to changing times. He has been able to create new opportunities for himself and others by embracing new technologies and constantly looking for ways to innovate.
Transcript ———–
Farah [00:00:07] Hello and welcome to the Shipshape Podcast, a series of podcasts where we meet amazing people and talk about their experiences, personal, technical and all related to the maritime world. Come and dive in. Dive in, Dive in.
Georgia [00:00:40] This week on the Shipshape podcast, we speak to Fly Navarro, founder of a social media marketing and promotion company Fly Stone Fishing, and the founder of Aarti TV, a streaming service which helps distribute content to over 320 million homes. Here we find out more about his journey, about how he got to where he is today, what it’s been like fishing in six of the world’s seven continents, and explore some of the hottest topics within the world of fishing. My name is Georgia Tyndall, and I’m a freelance editor and writer in the Maritime Sphere, based in Lancaster in the U.K. And I’m joined by Merrill.
Merrill [00:01:14] Merrill Charette. I’m a liveaboard on a Ta-Shing Tashiba 36, in Boston, Massachusetts. So fly, where you recording this from?
Fly [00:01:23] I’m coming at you live from West Palm Beach, Florida.
Merrill [00:01:28] And how’s the weather down there these days?
Fly [00:01:31] You know what? We for us, we just got a little cold front that passed through here. So I think we’re in a whopping 78 degrees right now.
Merrill [00:01:39] Yeah, it was two days ago Boston had like -40 with the wind chills. It was unbelievably cold.
Fly [00:01:46] I was talking to my buddy up in Canada, up in Nova Scotia, Canada. He was -53 and that was Celsius with the wind chill. His house got down to three degrees Celsius with the heater on it couldn’t keep up. That’s how cold it was up there. I sent them a picture of me in shorts, just, you know, just to get them to enjoy time a little bit.
Merrill [00:02:12] So Fly, you’re huge in the fishing industry. But I want to hear. What about the ocean brings you to it?
Fly [00:02:20] You know, that’s a great question on a couple of different fronts. Number one, I just love being outdoors. I mean, I was very fortunate that I’ve been able to create not only a career, but now a business out of my love and passion for the ocean. But it’s not just the passion for the ocean that keeps driving me back. It’s my passion for being around people. When I wrote my book back in 2020, one of the quotes that they grabbed for me and they put it all over the book was fishing. There’s a difference between fishing and catching. Catching is actually reeling in the fish. Fishing is what is the time you spend with your friends and family in between bites. So that’s a big deal to me, spending time with my friends and family. Even now that I’m a business owner instead of just a fisherman. When I have business meetings, I like to have them on a boat. That’s just kind of my comfort area. I’m not a boardroom guy. I like to be on boats. I like to be outside. I like it’s just for me, it feels more relaxing. And that’s what what drove me to the ocean and that’s what’s kept me there. I’ve been in the industry now 32 years. I was just filling out the paperwork, so I started it when I was 18 years old and once people knew, I spoke Spanish and got a chance to go to Central and South America, I just kind of kept circling the globe and, hey, let’s go to Costa Rica, let’s go to Panama, let’s go to Venezuela, living in Venezuela through the late nineties and then in the middle, I would say right around 2012, I started traveling to the Hawaii’s, the Japans, and just kind of expanded my reach throughout the world. So that’s yeah, and I love sharing it with everybody. When I wake up, my goal every morning for my business is to introduce fishing to one port, one new person every day. That’s my goal.
Georgia [00:04:12] And how was that with obviously you mentioned about the importance of in-person interaction. Did you have to give that a pause for a couple of years? Obviously with the pandemic and everything, how did that affect your ability to do the thing you love?
Fly [00:04:24] Well, you know, that’s a great question, because right before we started recording, I told you it was a definite bonus for me. I was I got on the last flight out of the Dominican Republic before they closed that country. I was supposed to be home for 36 hours and fly to Stockholm, Sweden, to go to the Swedish Fish Show. And then from there I was going to go to Saudi Arabia. I had to stop all that. And as anybody, which everybody kind of went through the pandemic, we thought it was going to be over in 14 or 15 days, 15 days to slow the spread. And after about day ten, I was going a little stir crazy. So I grabbed my two phones. I’m like, I need to talk to some fisherman. So I grabbed my phones. I went outside the front yard and I started broadcasting live on Facebook, live on a couple of different channels that I have. And like everybody else, we were all stuck at home and people were nervous. People didn’t know what was going on. So I started giving not necessarily fishing reports, but where you could go fishing. There was so much different stories that were coming out where you can go for. Fishing where you could in some states you weren’t allowed to like the state of Washington. You couldn’t go out fishing. You were not allowed to go out and in Mother Nature and go fishing in the state of Virginia, you were allowed to go fishing, but you couldn’t go on a charter boat here in Florida. We had certain we were allowed to go fishing. We were allowed to go hunting. But in Palm Beach County, where I live, Palm Beach, Broward and Dade, we weren’t allowed to use the boat ramp. So if you wanted to go fishing off the beach, off a canal that was wide open, but you couldn’t put your boats in the water. So what I was doing was getting online and just passing on information. And I had a lot of friends that are in the fishing industry that were losing charters. They were losing business. So anybody that’s familiar with the algorithms and Facebook knows that you can’t put a website link on Facebook. They’ll squash it in the algorithm, but they don’t care if you put it in the comments. So I would talk for an hour or 2 hours. Some days I’m like, Just put your businesses in my comments. And I was averaging, I don’t know, 15 to 20000 people watching me live. And I would just talk I would talk for hours and just share what we were doing and built out my podcast from there. But it what it did was connect me with even more people, people that wanted to share information, people that wanted to talk about fishing. So with that, everybody was stuck behind their computers and what I did was created more businesses behind it, just, Hey, we got an idea, let’s do something. And that’s where art was created because of the COVID lockdown.
Merrill [00:07:07] If we rewind a little bit more, how exactly did you end up even getting into the fishing industry? I mean, were your parents fishermen? Do you grow up on boats?
Fly [00:07:18] So here’s the funny thing. I never knew that fishing was an industry, had no clue as an industry, what got me started When I was in high school, I used to refinish patio furniture and the great job I had while my boss there. His father was a boat captain and my first year in college he came up to me and says, What are you doing this summer? And I said, I’m working to pay for college, and when I’m working, I’m going to go fishing because I need a deckhand to go to Mexico with me this year. I’m going to hire you if you’d like to come to America. I’m like, Whoa, I don’t know anything about big boats, because don’t worry about I’ll teach you about big boats. I just need someone to speak Spanish that’s bilingual. So I got down to Mexico, and once everybody knew that I spoke both languages, I was a hot commodity and I got snatched up. And a few months later I went through the Panama Canal for the first time. The first of 11 times I’ve been through the Panama Canal, and a few years later I got an invite to go fishing in Venezuela, where I lived for four years from 97 through 2000. And I made a great name for myself in that Central American world. And that’s where I kind of spent a lot of my my career was in Central South America, in the Caribbean, bouncing between Puerto Rico, St Thomas, Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Costa Rica. And not only did it help me create a name for myself, but all those places have some phenomenal fishing. So it definitely helped me hone my craft because of the fact that we had so many opportunities at Fish. So there’s something to be said about putting yourself in the situation over and over and over and over again when you know you’re going to have that many opportunities. You’ll I don’t know about other people. I know me. I’m going to take risk. I’m going to learn new things. And I know in the Oh, what year was it? Probably about 97, 97, 98. We were in Venezuela and we started playing with circle hooks. And I even had some guys tell me, what are you doing? And I’m like, Man, I have a feeling they’re going to they’re going to implement this as a federal law if things continue down the road, we’re going. So I want to be ahead of the curve. And sure enough, HMS Highly Migratory Species Division of National Marine Fisheries, they implemented in 2001 that all billfish during sanctioned tournaments must be caught on circle hooks. So by the time they pass the law, I would say I was about four years ahead of the curve on that one. So I like taking risk. I like, you know, I don’t mind falling flat on my face. I’m one of the first people to laugh at myself. I mean, if you’ve got a face like this, you’ve got to learn how to laugh.
Georgia [00:10:01] So I was just wondering, you’ve mentioned you’ve obviously done fishing in lots of different countries and all around the world. What are the kind of key differences between fishing in the U.S. versus other countries? I mean, I obviously from a UK perspective, morals US based, but you’ve mentioned a lot of other places. Just wondering if there’s any like big differences that might be of interest.
Fly [00:10:24] Oh my gosh, there’s all kinds of differences, but that’s the best part about it. And it’s funny you bring that up because I have a lot of people. Hey, do you want to come fishing with us? Fill in the blank. And they are like, you know, how much equipment are you going to bring with you? And I’m like, What do you mean, equipment? How much fishing equipment? I’m like, I’m not bringing any. And they’re like, Really? And I’m like, Well, I don’t want to go to. Now, it was different when I was still working on boats. But now when I do more traveling as far as helping people promote their fisheries and stuff like that, I don’t bring my taco with me for one main reason. I do not want to go to a new location and fish how I fish here. I want to go to a location and learn how other people are fishing. And you know, I go to Japan and I go fishing and I watch how they fish. I’ll go to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Dubai, Seychelles. And I go, and I want to learn how other people fish. I’m not trying to create a world of how I fish. I want to introduce the world to fishing. Even my fishing encyclopedia. I don’t even show people how I do things. I just get the best in the industry to show how they do things. Because you can find a hundred different ways to do the same thing over and over and over again. And my thing is, I’m not trying to teach the world to be me. I’m just trying to be a conduit to show the world what fishing can be all about. And when I go places, I go and listen. If the local method of fishing is hand lighting, I’ll go hand lining. If the local way is to go popping and jigging, I’ll do popping and jigging. Now, if I go somewhere enough times and they ask me, Hey, how would you do things different then? Yeah, I’m happy to interject some ideas, but I kind of go and I want to be molded. I want to learn, I want to. What’s the word I’m looking for? Just kind of immerse myself in the local fishery, in everything. I mean. Part of traveling is learning about how other people are doing things, and it makes you appreciate what you have that much more. But it also lets you see. And sometimes you pick up little things where it’s like, Oh, that little technique I could use somewhere else. And yeah, it kind of makes it kind of homogenized where you get everybody’s little technique. And my sister always teases me. I always say I’m like a chameleon. Just kind of blend in somewhere. But my sister uses that. It’s a quote from Bruce Lee. She goes, You’re like water wherever you get poured into, you just kind of fit into it. You pour water into a glass, it turns into a glass and pour it into a bottle. Turns into a bottle. That’s kind of me. I just go into a country and I try to blend in. I don’t I don’t want to bring too much attention to myself, which is hard because I’m loud, I’m kind of boisterous, I’m very gregarious. So usually when I show up places, people know I’m there. But I want to learn. I want to I want to go to a country I love, fish, how they fish. You know, I’ve been to some great countries and learned how they tuna fished in Italy and Spain and Greece. I’ve been invited to go to the UK to do some bluefin fishing and to Norway and Denmark. And I want to learn how. I don’t want to bring my techniques. Not that I won’t share them, but I want to see what you guys are doing first. And if I can help you add to it, then I will. But if not, I’ll just sit there and take pictures and meet people and see what I can give to a situation.
Merrill [00:14:06] So what is one of the most unique ways of fishing that you’ve seen?
Fly [00:14:10] Holy smokes. I have seen some pretty cool, unique way. You know, I got one and I haven’t seen it yet. I’m trying to line it up. So Japanese out of Okinawa? I do. I probably do three trips a year to Japan. I absolutely love Japan. I got some business over there. But Okinawa, it has always been a fishing village. Even way back when, before World War Two. And now we have a lot of military bases over there because of World War Two. But one of the fishing techniques that I’m very curious about. So here in the United States and originally the first time I’ve ever seen this technique, fishing, daytime fishing for swordfish was in Venezuela when I lived down there. Now they’ve used that daytime deep dropping four swordfish here off the United States up and down the East Coast. While the Japanese commercial fishermen have been fishing for swordfish during the day for thousands of years. I never knew that until I went to Okinawa. And they were telling me how they use a big stainless steel ring and they put a little light in the middle of it and they drop it down 2000 foot of water. And what ends up happening is the swordfish will see that light and they will swim to that light to see what it’s all about and that light being in the ring. Once they. Women to the ring because all their fins, their dorsal and their pet friends are all rigid. They don’t fold back. Once they swim through the ring, they get caught in the ring and now they get brought up. They can’t swim backwards. So they’re stuck in it. And now they bring them up. And it’s one of the things I’ve always wanted to see. I’ve talked with the local fish through a translator. I don’t know Japanese. I know a couple of little word, but it was something that I always wanted to try and I know I believe in 85 and again in oh three or four commercial guys have brought in £2,000 blue marlins into Okinawa. So there’s some great there’s some great techniques, different techniques over there. But that’s one that I really want to see. I’ve done some hand lining in the Red Sea off of Saudi Arabia, and what they do is they will get a brick, break it in half, put a couple pieces of fish in it, put a hook in one of the pieces of fish, grind it all up, put it between another brick. Wrap your fishing line around it and drop it down. And whatever depth it gets to that, you want it at your count at five, ten, 15, 20, whatever, 100 foot. Then they’ll pull on it. And what it does is unwraps all those bricks and then your beetle come out with all the other little pieces of bait around it and the fish will come in and start eating all the little pieces of bait until they get to the one that has your hook in it. So I’ve enjoyed that. That’s been fun. Yeah, I’ve done all kinds of different things. I could probably go through my brain all the different areas I’ve been to and tried something new, the fishing itself. Here’s a funny thing. I’ve been to a lot of countries where I’m the only person that speaks English on a boat, and it’s almost fishing by yourself because you really can’t communicate. But you can. That’s the great part. Even though it’s I don’t know how to say real and whatever particular language and they don’t know how to speak in English. But we know about fishing. We know about fishing. It’s it’s all the same premise. It’s all about hunting and playing that cat and mouse game. And how do you present eBay? All that stuff is that traverses the language barrier. Yeah, tying knots. How do you prepare bait? How do you keep it fresh? All that stuff. You don’t need language for that. You really don’t. And that’s one of the things that I really I personally, really enjoy.
Georgia [00:17:58] You mentioned lots of different regions, and I’ve seen that you guys helped introduce the first ever international fishing tournament in Saudi Arabia. You just mentioned a story about Saudi Arabia. Tell us a little bit more about that experience.
Fly [00:18:12] It’s so funny because just you talking about it, I get goose bumps about it. So I helped put together the first international fishing tournament in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. We it was so cool. It really was because Saudi Arabia and I don’t know how much history, you know, Saudi, but Saudi has pretty much been closed throughout its whole history. They’ve only recently opened up to the public. The first time I went there, it was a full fledged process to get a visa. There was no tourism. And what they’re trying to do is open it up to tourism. And one of the first things they did was they wanted to have an international fishing tournament. And where they brought me in was my background in fishing. But my background was on social media and my connections that I have throughout the world. They allowed me to invite six different teams from around the globe. We decided to invite one team from each continent. So I grabbed the biggest social media influencer from every continent that I could, and we hosted them in Saudi Arabia. So with those six teams, we had just over five and a half million person reach. So first and third place, second place was the local team. First place was a team out of Australia, third place was a team out of the US. So all their YouTubers and Instagram followers got to see what Saudi was all about. So it was so successful that year too. They said, Well, can you invite 30 teams like I can, about 100 teams if you want, just tell me what you want, I’ll do it. We started and that’s why I was flying to Stockholm, because I was looking to find some fishermen from Europe. I had gotten some fishermen from Ukraine, fishermen from Australia and New Zealand. Right as COVID hit, I had 19 teams invited with those 19 teams that had a reach of about 26 and a half million followers. And what we were going to do the layout just a little bit different. But yeah, we were going to have we had right around 26 and a half million followers when COVID hit and locked everything down. But what a beautiful country. I have not been back since COVID. I was in Dubai, actually. The guys that I put on the tournament with, I met the. In July. Back in November, we went and fished the Fujairah tournament out of Dubai. And actually I just saw him again last week that came up for a shot show. And yeah, I’ve got I’ve made some great friends out of the Middle East. There was a certain point during my career and during my the beginning parts of my company that I had gotten an email from Facebook that I was one of the largest content producers in the Middle East, So a lot of my fishing content was being consumed in the sea region between Kuwait, Iraq, Saudi, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Egypt, that whole region. I was getting a lot of people consuming my content just and most of it was just basic fishing stuff, how to rig baits, how to play knots. I tried to when I teach people, I try to teach them. I want to start from the very beginning and then move my way up. So I can’t I don’t want to assume that, you know, X amount, but if I’m going to teach it, let’s start from the very beginning and if you know all of it, then we’ll just zoom right through. And at least now we know we’re sharing the same words sometimes where I see people make mistakes when they’re coaching people is we know somebody knows something. But what we don’t know is the vocabulary that’s being used. Like I might say, put it in free spool and somebody else’s. Let the line out. Something as simple as that could create a whole kerfuffle. If I don’t know that we’re we’re on the same plane as far as what words we’re using. So it’s a it’s a for me, communication is so key and everything. Something as simple as what are the words that you use in one of the words that I use.
Farah [00:22:06] This show was sponsored by Shipshape school.
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Farah [00:23:04] Welcome back to the Shipshape podcast.
Merrill [00:23:10] So how do you keep up with the latest trends and developments that are happening in the fishing industry and what role does technology play in the whole? Fishing?
Fly [00:23:21] So being that I do not make my living off of being on the boats anymore. I am not at the cusp of all the new technologies that are coming out in the boats directly like I used to be. I am more of okay, how is it affecting the community? How is it affecting the industry? And then I get the phone calls. Hey, this thing is going on. How do we adapt rules and regulations around it? Where I seem to get more calls off now is because now I’m more in the social media world and the digital world. It’s that’s where I am getting a lot of my phone calls. So how do we. We’ve created this content. How do we distribute it? How’s the best way to distribute it? How is the fastest way to distribute it? And being that my passion is fishing. That’s where the most of my energy goes is how do we get good content out in the fishing world? And that listen, that could be something as simple as, Hey, there’s a new boat out here to hey, the the government has just implemented some new fishery regulations. How do we get it out to as many people as possible? So to me that if you’ve watched any kind of sports and I some people may or may not look at fishing as a sport, I look at it as a sport. I’m 50 years old. I’m not 25 years old anymore. I wish I was. No, I don’t. I’m happy with what I do. I’m happy with where I’m at. But it is a young man’s game to be out there fishing 200, 300 days. It was great when I was 25, 30, 35. Now, with what I know. I feel that it’s more important for me to share the information of my industry, to get new people in and how to make it easier for people to travel, go to new places. So it’s no different than if you were a pro athlete. At some day you’re going to retire either because you’re not functional or because you want to move on to something else. And at that point it’s up to you. Do you want to be a coach? Do you want to be a coordinator? Do you want to work in the front office? Do you want to own the team? So I personally have moved on from being on the boat 250 days a year. I may still finish 90 to 110 days a year, but not as much as I used to. But now I do more of the stuff behind the scenes. I do a lot of work with different fisheries. I’m on two different fishery councils out of Washington, D.C. I’m getting ready to apply for another spot on a different fishing council, and that’s where I get reached out to a lot. And the way I look at it is I do not want to see an academic make the rules for our industry, even though there are academics in it, that we need somebody that has made a living on the recreational side to speak for us. So that is my way of giving back to my industry. Also, because of the way I’ve created my business and distributing content, I want to make sure that the government is passing on the information as clearly and precise as possible. And that’s where I have a lot of what’s the word I’m looking for. Pull my hair out moments is you guys got to do a better job of explaining some of this to people. For the people that do this for a living, it’s our job to know all the rules when you’re, for lack of a better term, a weekend warrior, somebody that just likes to go fishing maybe twice a month, they might not be read up on all the different rules and regulations that our government, both federally and state and locally, that they implement on fishermen. And I feel that it is the government’s responsibility to make sure that information is easily obtained by the fishermen. So that’s one of the areas that I push really hard on to make sure that the government that is sometimes spends money at a crazy rate should be spending money on making sure the communication channels are wide open.
Merrill [00:27:24] You bring up a good point that is creating awareness and, you know, the fishing industry. And then I’m in kind of like the business of boating. When the regulation was proposed about the speed restriction, when I first found out about that, I reached out to a lot of CEOs that are in the industry. I said, you know, did you hear about this? No one had any clue about it. And it was at that moment that I realized that just giving the information to trade associations and saying, hey, how about you try to get that word out? There was just not a way of really creating awareness. Can you talk a little bit on what are some ways of of actually creating awareness and. Exposure of a lot of these things.
Fly [00:28:06] Sometimes it feels that they don’t want awareness. Sometimes it feels that if you create awareness, it will stop. The goal that they are trying to achieve. And that proposed tenant rule really felt that way. It came out very low key and it took some industry leaders to really push it out there to let everybody know what they were trying to do. And for those anybody that’s listening, that’s not familiar. There was a proposed and I believe it was from Maine all the way to the Florida Georgia line. I think it was 60 miles, but it could have been 90 miles all the way up and down the east coast of the United States to make it a tenant area to protect right whales. And for anybody that knows, right whales are endangered species. And listen, I totally understand trying to protect any species, not just an endangered one. But at the same time, our industry has not had an interaction with the white right whale. When I say our industry, meaning the recreational sector, has not had any interaction with the right whale in, I believe, 20 years. So the fact that they were getting ready to implement this on a segment of the population that hasn’t had any kind of interaction, at least not a fatal interaction in 20 years, was just a giant overreach by the government. Now, that same group that is pushing for this is also pushing it actually up in your air area, Merrell. They’re looking to implement some rules and regulations on the on the lobster industry. They are looking to shut down the entire Maine lobster industry up in the north because of entanglement problems. And I believe and I’m saying entanglement problems like it is a problem. I want to believe that it’s been even longer since a right whale has interacted with lobster gear. I want to say it’s almost like 27 years since a right whale has had any kind of interaction where it’s caused a fatality. So it seems I’m going to get controversial on here. So you guys get a bunch of calls and I’m probably gonna get a bunch of hate calls. Sometimes I wonder if regulations are put in because of social pressure, but it’s I’ve seen it. I’ve questioned it. I have no problem standing on my soap box and banging on any heads that I have to. Sometimes it seems like it’s social pressure that is pushing a lot of the regulations in as opposed to what actually is happening. And and this could have a double edged sword on on this right whale stuff. I don’t know. It seems like it’s a double edged sword or it seems like they’re trying to shoot down a couple of birds with one stone. But I would be more concerned with what’s going on with cargo ships and cruise ships and so on and so forth, which they have no control over. I don’t think they have not know anyway. So I definitely feel like it’s an overreach.
Merrill [00:31:19] Well, I’m not going to sit here and say it’s controversial. You know, my experience because I’ve got It’s controversial.
Fly [00:31:25] It’s controversial, dude. It’s way controversial. There’s a lot of money involved in recreational fishing for you to shut it down to ten knots. It is controversial for for the government to try to shut you down. Imagine. Are you familiar with the key deer now? Key deer? It’s a regular deer, but they’re only indigenous to the Florida Keys, mainly Big Pine Key. And it would be shutting down traffic on U.S. one for the entire coast of the United States. For the Florida key deer that’s only on Big Pine Key. Make everybody up and down the East Coast go ten miles an hour. So it’s a huge thing and it is controversial.
Merrill [00:32:13] I’m not going to debate you on the fact it is controversial, but what I merely am suggesting from my experience, because I’ve gone to a bunch of ocean conservation groups, I’ve gone to a bunch of blue tech venture capital groups, I’ve talked to a lot of people in the industry, and there’s just an overall lack of communication throughout, right? No one knows what’s really going on and everyone is kind of coming up with different opinions. And yes, public policy is kind of shifting towards that. But it’s incredible how these people that are coming up with all these restrictions aren’t talking to really anyone in the marine industry to begin with and finding out what the problem actually is and how to solve the problem by working together.
Fly [00:32:59] I you can see the same thing with the wind farms up by you. Those wind farms. When it was brought to us, HMAS they brought it up on the table for it wasn’t necessarily public comment, it was just comment for the advisory panel. But what I came to find out once they brought it to the table, all the leases had been signed. There was no discussion. They already signed the leases. They were getting ready to put the wind farms out there. So I didn’t understand why they even brought it up to us, because the decision had already been made. And now we’re starting to see some issues in the Northeast and we’re not sure if that problem has to do with the wind farms or not. And what I’m I am not accusing anything or anybody of anything. What I’m saying is it’s a we’re starting to see a lot of whales beach themselves in the northeast at the same time that they implemented a lot of these wind farms once they went online. So is that the problem? I don’t know. I really don’t know. But that’s it’s definitely something that’s circulating around in the public asking, hey, before you add any more wind farms, we better do some investigating on this. Because if you are trying to save whales with the ten mile an hour zone, this wind farm issue could be even worse for the whale. So we better stop what we’re doing and start studying what this is all about.
Georgia [00:34:26] I was thinking earlier, you referred to, obviously your kind of changing role within fishing a little bit less on the kind of I don’t to use what? Frontline Because that sounds a bit odd, but, you know, I mean, less doing, a bit less of the sort of day to day stuff. I noticed how you mentioned it’s a young man’s game. There’s obviously a bit of a perception that fishing is quite like a macho activity. But I’ve noticed on your Instagram there are some cool pictures of women fishing as well. So just kind of wondered if you if there’s been any kind of uptick in sort of more women getting involved.
Fly [00:34:58] Oh, my gosh. So I am sure when I put on my fishing events, I do not give out any trophies for top male anglers. The hell with you guys. I give out trophies for top female and top junior anglers, and I do that for several reasons. Number one, especially fishing for Billfish, H.M.S. Billfish Tunas, Sharks. It’s a team sport. So I have this thing because I’ve spent so many years either in the cockpit or on the bridge running the boat. It’s a team sport, so I honor the teams. When I put on tournaments, I honor the team, unless you’re a female angler or a junior angler. And that goes back to my goal in my business is to introduce fishing every single day to a new person. And I’m very, very big and not just in my industry. In every industry, I always push it hard. Who is reaching out to the next generation to lift up that generation to what we’re doing now? So that is my push for junior anglers. My push for female anglers is if you get mom fishing, you get the kids fishing. And I’m just a big proponent of that. I if mom goes fishing, the kids are going to go fishing. If that goes fishing, listen, I’m going to throw all those guys under the bus. I just want to hang out with the boys. I’ll leave the kids at home and I’m going to go hang out with the boys. When mom goes fishing, the kids always go. The kids always go, Mom never leave the kids at home. And I don’t mean that in a sexist way. I mean that in moms. Make sure that they take care of their kids and they want to share what they do. And guys may sometimes bring the kids, sometimes they don’t. But I try to build my events to make sure we encourage our female anglers and our junior anglers. I want to make sure that our sport is constantly growing and a lot of times things can be done in a administrative way in a tournament to help encourage that. So I always try to look at it. You know what? Here’s a perfect example. We’re talking about the wind farms. This could the problem with the whales could be an adverse effect. Well, I try to anything I do, I kind of look at it like like chess. I try to look at it three steps ahead. And one of those things is I want to make sure I structure my tournaments to encourage the most amount of females and the most amount of junior anglers to participate as possible. There’s a huge uptick in the number of females that are fishing. It’s a growing sport. It’s a sport that you don’t have to be genetically disposition to be good at. You don’t have to be six foot seven, you don’t have to run a 440, you just have to put your heart and soul into it. It doesn’t matter if you’re guy girl, kid doesn’t matter. Just as long as you put your heart and soul, you’re going to get what you put into it. So yeah, I’m a big proponent to opening the doors to as many people as possible.
Merrill [00:38:09] There must have been a huge spike in people getting into fishing during COVID. Yeah.
Fly [00:38:14] So before COVID, we had 47 million anglers in this country as of December 2020, and that was at the very beginning of it. We added 13 million and brought it up to 60 million after December 2020. I’m not sure I haven’t revisited those numbers, but from March of 2020 till December of 2020, we added 13 million new fishermen. It was a way to get outside. It was a way to be alone. And knowing what we know now, being outside is the best thing for you. Go outside, get some sunshine. But now there was a big influx to it. And even here in the state of Florida, we added 47% new boat ownership, I mean, which was huge. So, no, I think COVID was really good for the boating industry, for the fishing industry. But again, for me, it was definitely it was a great time to force me to sit behind my computer and get work done, which was awesome. To be honest with you.
Merrill [00:39:12] What do you see as the future of the fishing industry?
Fly [00:39:16] Holy moly.
Merrill [00:39:17] Very open ended question.
Fly [00:39:19] That is very open ended. You know what I’m starting to notice and I don’t know how old you guys are. I’m assuming you’re younger than me. Both of you are. But I don’t think you guys are that young. I’m going to guess you guys are in your twenties, Both of you.
Merrill [00:39:32] I just turned 30.
Georgia [00:39:33] 27?
Fly [00:39:34] Yeah. Okay. So I would say that your guys generation and the one behind you are really pushing more to do things in the outdoors. A piece of my generation. And then you guys, I think you guys fall under Gen Z.
Merrill [00:39:52] Millennial.
Fly [00:39:53] You are millennial, huh? Okay. I know Gen Z is really doing a lot more with the outdoors, I don’t want to say for, but with the outdoors. And I believe your generation, there’s there’s definitely an uptick compared to my generation, which I’m Gen X, there’s definitely more of an uptick. And we’re starting to see where as a whole, society as a whole is starting to look at things like growing their own food, going out and harvesting your own food. I mean, I want to say I’m lucky. I’ve always been a fisherman and a hunter. I like to go out. I just went and picked up all my elk the other day. My freezer is filled with things I’ve harvested. I know I caught it, I harvested it, I cleaned it. The only thing I didn’t do is I took it to a butcher to have them packages without packaging it up for me. But I like to harvest my own food. I like to know where it comes from. And that is something that’s becoming more and more every day. People want to know that their food isn’t coming from a manufacturing plant. They want to know that it’s healthy food. So I see the future of fishing to become a little bit more substantive space instead of just recreation. So people that want to go out and catch fish to eat or go out and catch lobsters or crabs to eat, I see that becoming more and more popular as time goes on, especially here, I would say over the next five or ten years. That’s just again, that’s just personal opinion, but that’s how I feel. We’re going to see more and more people want to take it up as not just a hobby, but as a way to provide a source of protein for their household. And again, it just seems as an outsider looking in, it seems like it’s easy for people to go out and harvest fish to eat than it would be to harvest a mammal harvesting a deer or harvesting an elk. Some people have a hard time with that, and I understand that it’s one way or another you’re taking a life and some people have issues with that and I totally get it. I don’t I don’t take it lightly when I harvest an animal to eat, whether it’s fish, whether it’s clams, whether it’s lobsters, whether it’s a deer or an elk or an antelope. I’m harvesting an animal. I’m taking somebody’s life. I’m taking some things life. And I know they’re giving their life to sustain me. And that’s the way I look at it. And I can understand why some people have that issue, but I don’t take it lightly either.
Merrill [00:42:20] How do you see regulations changing over the next few years.
Fly [00:42:24] In the fishing world? Yeah, I’m concerned with the regulations that I’m most concerned for is renewable energy. That’s the part I’m concerned with. I feel that renewable energy right now is being crammed down our throats. I would like to see it more of a initiative to see how they can make it better as opposed to forcing it down our throats right now when it’s not the most economically viable means of what we’re doing. And I say that if you’re an electric car and it breaks down, you can walk home, you can walk somewhere if you’re on a. Electric boat and it breaks down. You’re you’re in a hostile environment. You’re not going to walk home. And I am concerned with that. I’m watching certain regulations being put on the industry that make it harder and harder and more expensive for people to go out there and enjoy the fishery, make it more expensive for people to do it on a commercial basis. Do I want to see something in renewable? Absolutely. I want to make sure that everybody’s taken care of properly. But I do not think that we are in a position right now to force people to do it, can we? I don’t like being forced to do anything, to be honest with you, but I would like to see some some more advanced is made. I don’t think the technology we have right now for batteries is just as good as we can get. I think we can do better. I think we’re pushing this whole electric into an area that there is no way to sustain the amount of batteries that we need to push it across all levels. And we’re very fortunate in this country, or should I say in Western civilization, that we have the resources to push certain things. But that being said, it is not the most economical way of doing things. And sometimes you made me go into politics. You look at what’s happening in Germany right now. Germany is there was such a push for green energy that it literally went backwards. Germany right now is starting to amplify and open up their coal power plants. So we’ve actually gone backwards because of the fact that we’ve pushed green energy so much but can’t keep up with it. So we went backwards and I don’t want to see that I hate going backwards because of regulations. I would love to see something that it’s in unison. Hey, when we can use green. I know we’ve talked. I say we, my girlfriend myself, we’ve talked about solar panels. We’ve talked about wind energy in one of our houses to offset the load on the power grid. But at the same time, we also know that we cannot count on it 100%. And that’s that’s the part that that concerns me with my industry. And to be honest with you, that ten mile an hour, that ten not zone up and down the East Coast, I feel and again, this is just an opinion. I feel that that has to do along the same lines on renewable energy to lower the cost, to lower the amount of fuel used in our industry. That’s just a personal opinion. I think that’s a backhanded approach to it under the guise of protecting an endangered well that we haven’t had any interaction with in over 20 years.
Georgia [00:45:47] So if there was one thing that you’d like people to take away from listening to this lovely podcast that you’ve done with us about fishing or anything, we’ve talked about what would be the kind of key, the key message that you’d be putting on your T-shirt.
Fly [00:46:01] Get your ass off the couch and go outside. Really, I mean, go outside. You guys, I see it when I go to Japan a lot and they have signs about it. Next time you guys are out at a restaurant, look around at all the tables. Look how many people are sitting there staring at their phone. Look, go to the next traffic light. Look. Look around. Everybody’s looking at their phones. Get off your. Go outside. Go talk to somebody when I go fishing. One of the greatest things about being offshore is I lose cell service. I can’t look at my phone. People can’t look at their phone. They have to listen to me talk. And again, we’re social creatures. That’s what we are. We’re social creatures. Only until recently in today’s world, depending on where you live out, it’s also a little bit different. But people don’t know their neighbors. People don’t go talking. When I go up to Canada on Sunday, if you sit out on the porch and you wait for people to drive by and stop in and say hello and you talk and you have a cup of coffee and you relate to your neighbors. Nowadays people don’t do that. And I mean, if they’re going to take anything away from this podcast is get off your ass, go outside, go enjoy what Mother Nature gave you. If we are going to talk about renewable energy, if we’re gonna talk about how do we make things better, go outside, enjoy it. Don’t just sit inside behind a computer and complain. Go outside, Enjoy what Mother Nature gave you. Enjoy what God has given us. Look at that sunrise. Look at the sunset. Feel the cold breeze on you. Feel the warm breeze on you. Sit outside, talk with your favorite person, sit on the grass and share a story. Yeah, those are. That’s the biggest thing for me, is listen, we all have to be in front of the phones. We all have to be in front of these computers. Get outside. Enjoy the moment. I mean, it’s nice that we can get on this call. And you’re in the UK and you’re in Boston. I’m in Florida, and it’s great that we have this technology, but unplug from it for a little while. Go outside. I’d. I know when I’m behind this computer all day long and somebody calls me, the first thing I do is walk out front and just do laps in my parking lot. You know, it’s not a big parking lot. We put three cars in it, but I fucking walk around in it and enjoy being outside. So go outside. Enjoy. Let the sun hit your face. We’re we weren’t meant to be inside the cave all day long. We were. We’re meant to go outside and. Excuse me. Be social with one another and talk and get to know your fellow man. I think it’s a it’s a big deal.
Georgia [00:48:39] Well, on that note.
Fly [00:48:40] Are we running close on your time? Because I keep watching you look up at the clock.
Georgia [00:48:45] No, I was just going to say on that note, we should probably take heed of what you’re saying and go outside.
Fly [00:48:51] Go outside? I mean, I have a hard time when I say I have a hard time. I don’t I know a lot of friends of mine that are in the agriculture business during the they’re in the cattle business. And I’ve never seen anybody that’s that works in the outdoors that doesn’t protect that resource. I know we’re constantly getting regulated on what we do with fish and how we catch and how big it is. But the people that use the resource are usually the ones that take care of it the best. And I know I have devoted so much time to protect my industry, my fishery and the environment that helps support it. And I don’t feel very comfortable when somebody is attacking me that doesn’t spend the amount of time that I do on the water, that I have an issue with that because I have spent countless of hours making sure I revive fish, take care of fish to to release them. I don’t want to just catch a fish and then let it go and have them die. I want to make sure he’s in the he or she is in the best capable brain before I let it go to make sure it can survive. And I want to make sure that our water is not polluted so we can go out fishing. I want to make sure that the resources we have are taken care of so that I can keep going back fishing over and over and over again. It’s kind of hypocritical if I would leave it in a worse state that I found in it. So I do have an issue when people are trying to overregulate me, when we are probably some of the biggest stewards of our environment and of our resource. You look at some of the groups like Ducks Unlimited, it’s just duck hunters that pay into the system every single year so that we have the proper habitat for the for the ducks to keep coming back in. So it’s the people that use the resource are usually the ones that are the best stewards of it.
Merrill [00:50:53] As we come to our conclusion. Could you give us a few life lessons that you’ve learned through fishing? You know, whether it be just life or business or how to see the world.
Fly [00:51:06] Number one time is our most valuable possessions. You can only spend time. Once I can make 100 bucks, I can spend a hundred bucks and I can make another 100. I’ve given you guys an hour here. I can’t get that back. I gave it to you because I wanted to give it to you. So you guys as young people, and it’s really hard when you’re young because you think you’re going to have all this time you’re not. We all have a finite number of minutes on this planet. Enjoy every single minute. You can do the things that you want to do when you want to do it, because you never know when your time on this earth is going to be gone. So invest your time wisely. Invest your time wisely, number one. Number two, help that next person up. And I don’t there’s a verse in the Bible that says, when you get up to a new level, make sure you reach behind you and you help the next person up when you’re somewhere before you take that next step, look who’s behind you and who you can help up. I think it’s that part. It, to me is very important because I think back over my career and I’ve had a lot of people that had reached back and helped me up. So as somebody as in my position, I’m always looking, who’s the next person I can help up? I’m always looking, Who’s the next person I can help up? Don’t look at a generation and say, and I have this conversation with my girlfriend all the time. Oh, this generation, they’re just not the same. I go now. They are. They said the same thing about us when we were 19. But help them up. Help them. Don’t just sit there and complain. Help that next generation. Hey, listen, you may look at it like this, but have you thought about it like this? And help them make those decisions or help them weed out all the fake stuff so they can see how they can make the decision in a faster way? So I would say anything I have to say that I’ve learned is all about our time. I have a lot of cool, cool business things I. What I’m doing. And at 50 years old, the one thing and I’m young. Listen, I feel that I’m young in my brain. I’m still 16, but there’s a lot of things I’m doing right now that I really I have to think to myself, am I planting a tree that I will never enjoy the shade of? And that is a very serious thing as a human that we have to look at what you’re doing now. Are you going to get a chance to enjoy it or are you doing it for somebody else to enjoy it? But you’re going to do it anyway because there’s a lot of things at 50 years old. It may take 20 years. It may take 25 years before it will reach maturity. Am I going to be here? I don’t know. Listen, I could choke on this green tea. I don’t know. But I do it because I know it’s it’s going to be better for my industry. And the things like you’re doing now is you’re bringing people together in this in our maritime community. And there’s a lot of different avenues. I mean, you reached out to me, I’m in the fishing world. There’s people that are in the motor yachting world. There’s people that are in the sail boating world. And what you guys are doing of bringing people together is cool. It’s great and you’re bringing added value to our industry. And and that’s important. So, you know, you’re not only investing your money in it, you’re investing your time in it. And that’s important. So when you’re looking to make a decision, do I want to give my time because you can’t get it back. So that’s really important. As somebody that’s a little bit older than you guys, I’m telling you, look at that. Hey, do I want to give five years of my time for this? And if it is, then go for it. But remember that you don’t think about it in your twenties and thirties. I didn’t think about it. And it took me being around some very intelligent people and situations that I looked at and said, You know what? My time is my most valuable possession and I can only spend it once. So be very wise. Who you going to spend your time with? So that’s one thing I’ve learned from business. I’ve learned from fishing. And yeah, and I’m always happy to help somebody that’s in the business world or in the fishing world to look at that and open up doors for them. So that’s, that’s a big that’s it for me. That’s a very big deal.
Merrill [00:55:18] So fly where can people find you and read about you, see your videos, get in contact.
Fly [00:55:24] If you just Google fly. NAVARRO All of my YouTube is fly. NAVARRO My Instagram, my Facebook, all my social media is under, fly and viral. You can also look me up on on LinkedIn. I reach out to a lot of people and help them out there. Or we’ve got this new streaming platform where we’re launching here in the next 30 or 60 days to bring fishing and all kinds of sports, not just fishing. We started out as a fishing platform and we realized once we built one highway, we can copy and paste that same highway to help people in different sports share their passion. So that’s what we’re doing. If you just Google Robert Fly Navarro, you’ll be able to get hold of me. And if you have any questions, I’m always here. And actually, Mario, you know, you reached out to me on LinkedIn and I believe we had the conversation last week and we put this thing together in less than a week. So again, I’m always a very big proponent of helping anybody in the industry. And more so now that we’ve jumped on this call, I’m glad to see that you guys are the next generation. And I was able to jump on a podcast and help you guys hopefully open up a door into our section of the industry.
Merrill [00:56:39] Well, certainly. But it was great talking to you. Fly Thank.
Fly [00:56:42] You. And if there’s anything else I can ever do to help you guys, I know you have a lot of different connections. I know we we had a discussion about it last week where you deal with a lot of different board members and a lot of trade in the space and stuff like that. And if there’s anything I can do to you guys, expand that. Let me know.
Farah [00:57:14] Check back every Tuesday for our latest episode and be sure to like, share and subscribe to ship Shaped Up.
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