Ep 28: E-scouting for Top-Notch Fishing Spots, with Mark Livesay

Mark Livesay is a well-known name in the e-scouting world. A favorite guest among hunting podcasts, Mark is the founder of Treeline Pursuits, a website and course that teach the ins and outs of e-scouting for elk. In the summers when he’s not chasing elk, Mark spends a great deal of time fly fishing the area around Yellowstone, and he applies similar techniques to searching for hidden gem fishing spots. In this episode, he does a deep dive into how he sets up the programs he uses, how he organizes his digital waypoints, what he looks for in a lake or river, and a ton of specific tools and resources that can help anyone read the land better from home.

Topo Layer: Earthpoint Topo

Snow Cover KML: “Latest NOHRSC Snow Model Snapshot” (KML downloads directly from Google search results)

Treeline Pursuits

Instagram: @treeline_pursuits

Facebook: //treelinepursuits

Email: mark@ultramaxsports.com

• Transcript

  Katie

  You're listening to the Fish Untamed podcast, your home for fly fishing the backcountry. All right, welcome to episode 28 of the Fish Untamed podcast. Today, I got a chance to talk to someone who I've been wanting to get on here for a while now and we finally made it work with our schedules. Mark Livesay is the founder of Treeline Pursuits, which is an online e-scouting course designed for elk hunters. But I've heard Mark on a couple of other podcasts and I've been following along with him online for a while and I reached out to him to see if he had any experience e-scouting for fishing and turns out he spends his entire summer fly fishing the Greater Yellowstone area. So I was super excited to hear that and he was super generous and offered to come on and talk about the way he goes about looking for fishing spots and using the online resources he has to find better places to fish, assess fishing pressure, things like that. So we finally made it happen, sat down and he shared a ton of useful information for who likes to use maps or other digital tools to pre-plan a fishing trip. And he doesn't just give vague tips about which programs he uses. He goes into pretty extreme detail about how he sets up the programs with his preferences, which programs do which things best and what they're not so great at, how he combines them, what he's looking for when he's trying to assess a fishing spot, how to assess fishing pressure. It's just all great stuff. Some of the stuff he talks about is in relation to the program he runs for elk hunting, but a lot of it's applicable to fishing as well because a lot of it's just how to set up the programs, how to assess terrain, things like that. But we do also get into some fishing-specific things that he's looking for when he's trying to assess whether a piece of water is worth going to check out. So I just can't express how much information he shares in this episode. It's been one of my favorites so far and I think everyone will learn a lot just from the years he's spent working with these programs and fine tuning them for his needs. So without further ado, here is my chat with Mark Livesay. All right, perfect. Do you just want to start by giving me a little bit about your history in hunting or fishing? How'd you get your start?

  Mark

  Sure. So I grew up in Missouri and I started hunting archery first, probably when I was about 10. Killed my first deer when I was 10 with my bow. It was a little bit of a junk show, but it got done. And I was hooked ever since. And I, you know, whitetail hunted all those years. And then when I got to college and graduated and got my first job, I was working for a Missouri Lions Eye Research Foundation, which is a, was basically a human tissue transplant bank, predominantly eye tissue, human eye tissue, corneas and things. So I have, you know, I worked in the medical field for 25 years. And while I worked there, my boss was a big white tail hunter and him and I decided one year we were just going to grab a back in those days, remember Katie, this was 32 years ago, there was no such thing as Google Earth or any of this stuff. We grabbed some topo maps and a couple of national force maps, drove to Colorado in a minivan, I'm not kidding, in a two-wheel drive minivan and hunted elk. And actually killed an elk my first year. And it was a cow elk, and I was hooked on that ever since, and I've been hunting elk ever since. I've only missed a couple of years because of work related issues. And I was doing a few triathlons, which I'll cover in a second. I had a few years I was racing pretty heavy. So I missed a few years, but out of the 32 years, I think I only missed one or two. And a lot of those years I mentioned to you earlier, I've made more than one trip out west. And then time went on. Just really loved elk hunting, really loved whitetail hunting. And then I got into the event production business and kind of how I got into the event production business was I started racing triathlons and met my second wife and we got married and we just been we started racing triathlons and we raced for well 13 or 14 years and in that time I was hunting still too, hunting elk and racing. And, um, my wife and I, she's done five Ironmans and I've done, well, I've done 11 Ironmans and we both went to the world championship in 2002. In Hawaii and did the Hawaii Ironman in 2002. So, um, we just had a great fun. Uh, career of racing triathlons. And then, um, I, you know, I, I was in the event business. We produce triathlons. So I own a company called Ultra Max Sports and we produce triathlons and marathons and bike races, all kinds of events across the country, mostly centered in the Midwest. And, um, four years ago, I decided to kind of relax from that. And, um, we packed up and moved our family out West and we decided to move to a state that I'd never hunted elk in. and we moved to Missoula, Montana. And ever since then, I've been like a kid in a candy store. And so the first year we got here in Montana, I started buying llamas, pack llamas to hunt with. And now I started, I bought four right off the bat, and now I've got 19. And I've got a bunch of six more babies on the way this year. So I'm breeding llamas, I'm renting llamas, and I'm using to hunt myself. And then I also use them, we can talk about this a little bit more, is I use them to guide trips. I guide fly fishing trips in Yellowstone National Park, deep in the back country with my llamas. We take fly fishermen in with llamas and spend four, five, six days fly fishing all over Yellowstone Park. And so that's kind of the nutshell.

  Katie

  I don't know if I've ever had somebody give such a rich introduction, uh, first couple of minutes. I'm not sure what's the, uh, the most impressive thing between the triathlons or the, uh, you know, coming out and killing an elk your first, your first attempt, but, um, did the 19 llamas include the four that just came in today?

  Mark

  No, the four that came today are from a friend of mine, Idaho falls. They're going on a, on a year long rental here. There's a ranch here in, um, down in Hamilton, Missouri, that's going to use four of them on their ranch for the whole summer and the fall. And so those I've got them here on my little, my little ranch, they're hanging out here for a month and then I'll deliver them for the, for their duty on June 1st.

  Katie

  Okay. Well, that sounds pretty awesome. Um, I actually just got done talking with a guy who uses goats to pack.

  Mark

  Yeah.

  Katie

  Ever since then, I'm just like, I got to get some sort of pack animal.

  Mark

  Well, I, I'll be honest. I spent a lot of time on that. So when I moved out here, you know, I'm 54 years old, Katie. So I'm not old. I'm just saying, I'm, I'm getting there. And I mentioned to you before we started, I had five uptakes this year and. You know, you know, I've done triathlons. I've been in pretty good shape. A lot of my life. Uh, I'm not in travel shape that I used to be at the moment, but, you know, I'm working on it, but, um, the fact is, you know, there's a reality that sets in when you're 54 years old, there's only so many hundred pound trips you can take body at that age and for me to hunt like I do I needed some I needed some partners. I think last year I spent over 65 days on hunting mule deer and elk so that's a lot of days and the wear and tear on your body you know just not gonna work out and especially the way I like to hunt and it lets me take in you know we could talk about this on the fishing side but it helps me take in better gear, it helps me take in better food, it helps me stay in longer. Obviously I can go in a lot further, I can do things by, I spend a lot of time solo, about 50% of my time is solo, so I can do it solo with these llamas and they're kind of like my buddies and we roll into the mountains, four, five, six, seven of those guys and me and we hang out for you know a couple weeks sometimes. And it's just, it's pretty special.

  Katie

  Yeah, I kind of feel like the pack animals might be used for pretty different things between hunting and fishing. Cause hunting, I think the, you know, the majority of what you're using them for is to carry the meat back out, but usually not carrying that much out for fishing, even if you're keeping some, but like you said, it's a good way to take a lot more stuff in just to stay a little bit more comfortable while you're out there.

  Mark

  Yeah, exactly. So like fishing, for example, one of the, One of my favorite things to do in Yellowstone is to pack float tubes in, into these super remote lakes. And most of these lakes well, not most. A lot of these lakes just don't get that kind of fishing pressure. Very many people are packing float tubes into these places. And it's a pretty serious trip. And people just really love it. And there's a lot of opportunities, whether you're doing that or you're river fishing, stream fishing, or a mixture of the two. So the llamas let us do that. And, uh, you know, multiple rods and all the things that, you know, and like I mentioned, just taking better food, you know, better sleeping arrangements. Um, you know, it just makes life a lot more bearable in the back country. You know, and Katie, most of the people that I talked to, especially fly fishermen is, you know, and I'm not saying older, younger, it doesn't really matter. The problem is it's not the walking or the hiking. They love that part. It's the carrying 60, 70 pounds, 10 miles in, 10 miles out. You know, whether or not you're, you know, you're not packing fish out, obviously, but, um, either way you're still carrying the load of your camp and your food, all the stuff. And so the llamas just allow to take all that pressure off so we can go in further. We can stay longer and we can move around a lot easier. And we're able to fish places that you can't hardly, you know, you can do it with a backpack, but it's not very, it's not real easy to do. For example, I'm going into the thoroughfare this year. I don't know if you're familiar. It's probably the most remote place of yellow in Yellowstone. And it's kind of on the South East side of the Yellowstone Lake. It's a very remote, very remote. It's going to take us two or three days to get into our area. And, uh, but I don't know that we could do it without, without the stock. And, um, so I'm really excited for this trip and, uh, some of these places just get virtually no fishing pressure. It's going to be pretty, it's going to be pretty, it's gonna be pretty amazing back there. I got a feeling.

  Katie

  Yeah. I'm jealous of your ability to carry a belly boat. I can take a belly boat in, you know, a couple of miles. We do maybe a couple of trips like that every year, but it's hard to do that and carry a tent and everything. Uh, usually the belly boat trips we're doing are just like a day trip. Cause that takes up your whole backpack.

  Mark

  That's right. You know, and then, well, and like I said, I mean, it it's not that you can't do it, but there may be guys that maybe they've got a slight knee injury or girls when, uh, you know, whatever, and, or they want to take younger kids. We take a lot of families. I would say the majority of my trips that I, that I guide in Yellowstone are family trips. that, you know, they've got some kids that are eight, nine. Well, we took a three-year-old. That three-year-old made it seven miles, 3,000 feet of elevation, no problem.

  Katie

  Oh, geez. I know adults who don't do that.

  Mark

  Well, that's the thing. We've got a few llamas that you can ride, that the kids can ride. Oh, okay. Adults can't ride them. So we got that option as well. But most of the kids, you give them the lead on the llama and they forget they're even hiking. And they're like, well, that was fun. And instead of, Oh, we only got one more mile to go.

  Katie

  Right. I’m not sure I’d be any different. Give me the, give me the llama and I'll have a great time.

  Mark

  The kids love it. And the mom is, they, they really respond to the younger, the younger kids. It's almost like they, I don't know. It's kind of a weird dynamic. They're, they're actually better with the kids than they are with the adults. And, uh, I don't know if the team is better than the kids. They just feel comfortable with them. They respond better to them. And, uh, anyway, it's quite a match and it's really, it's really fun to see those kids on those trips, um, handle those llamas all by themselves. And they just feel like, you know, it just gives them a power, maybe empowers those kids. And they're just, I don't know. I've just, these kids are just, it's just, it's gotta be the experience of their lifetime. You can just see it on their faces. So anyway, I love doing it and I'm excited. to get maybe get this COVID stuff behind us so we can start getting back into the backcountry again.

  Katie

  Oh me too. What are your restrictions like up there right now?

  Mark

  They're lifting them in Yellowstone in May. So just started here this week, they're lifting some. They're not too worried about the backcountry trips because we're pretty limited. You know we're eight to ten people anyway. And we and being keeping distance is pretty easy. and sanitation is easy for us. What they're most concerned about, I think, is like the crowds at Old Faithful and they're trying to figure out ways to implement those kinds of things. But as far as the guided trips and the back country trips, and they already kind of have social distancing going on because I don't know if you've ever been in Yellowstone, but you have to get a permit to camp in Yellowstone. You can't just go down to Yellowstone, hike in the back country and camp. You have to camp in designated places and you have to get a permit. So they know how many people at each campground, where they're at, how much distance between them, when they're leaving, when they're coming out, all the details. So it's already kind of, if you want to call it, made order for this situation. It's already works that way. So that part I don't think is going to be too bad. It's just mainly getting the administration back to work and all that kind of infrastructure stuff probably.

  Katie

  Yeah, I think we're in the, I'm not sure when we're supposed to open back up, but Rocky's closed too. But it's the same situation where I, to camp anywhere, you need a permit. And they have designated back country sites, you know, in addition to the more established campsites, even in the back country, you have to stay in certain spots and they keep track of how many people are going in and how many are coming out. But I'm not sure when Rocky's supposed to open back up. I haven't really paid too much attention to it, but I wonder if it's on the same schedule as Yellowstone.

  Mark

  I don't know. You guys over there in Colorado, guys are pretty, you guys have got some stickler rules over there. So, um, you guys have been one of the, one of the toughest to get, get things back to going. So not, not the toughest, but definitely tough.

  Katie

  Yeah. I've heard Washington's pretty bad.

  Mark

  Yeah. Washington, Michigan. There's some, there's some tough ones out there and you know, some places are worse than others. And I'm not here to, I'm certainly not here to pass my advice onto it. I, all I know is is that I'm ready to get back to getting into the back country, catching some of those gigantic Yellowstone cutthroats. And, um, I'm really, uh, I'm really excited about that.

  Katie

  Well, that's a perfect segue, um, into, into our e-scouting talk. Cause, uh, I'm, I'm looking forward to that too, but about the only thing we can do right now related to that is to, to dream about it and look at, look at pictures online and scroll around maps. I've been, I spent a couple hours the other night, just like looking at places and marking things down. I'm sure you've been spending a lot of time doing the same.

  Mark

  Yeah. So yeah, that's good. Let's jump into that. There's probably, you know, I was thinking about that. We've been, I mean, we've only been trying to do this podcast work for a year. It seems like, and I really appreciate your patience with me. And, uh, it seemed like every time we got ready to get on something else, crisis was happening, man. It was like, it was destined for us not to speak, but we, we got it together. Here we are. We've overcome. So I'm sure there's a lot of similarities between how I use e-scouting, at least the tools and the techniques that you're, you know, you're especially particularly your fly fishermen following would be, you know, if they're not doing it, it would be incredibly beneficial to them. And so maybe we can dive into some of that.

  Katie

  Yeah, for sure. I do want some tips like specific to finding fishing spots, but also, you know, one of the things I'm most curious about is just like how you're using these tools. And I've already picked up a lot of tips just from when I've heard you on hunting podcasts, just talking like, I know you'll probably get into this, but just changing the, the, the amount of elevation that's shown. I'm not sure what the, what the actual label is, but making the mountains look bigger than they are because, because by default they look smaller than they are. And just little tips like that, that when you've brought them up, I'm just like, holy How did I not know that tool was an option? So I'm sure that's a lot of people probably need some help with just working the tools. I mean, everyone's played around with Google Earth, but most people haven't done more than just, you know, click and drag and scroll around.

  Mark

  Yeah, well, would it be good if I just maybe talk about Google Earth particularly to start with and just give like five or six tips that I can throw out there and then maybe you can ask me more questions to expand on those. But I think setting up Google Earth, and I talk about this in my e-scouting course. And if you've got listeners that are hunters and they're also fly fishermen, this course is gonna be super valuable because not only will it help you, I think, find more elk and or mule deer or whatever you're hunting as far as an e-scouting tactics, but it will teach you the ins and outs of these tools. Google Earth, Onx Maps, and Gaia GPS, and Base Map are the ones I cover in the course. And I think setting those up and using them in a very similar fashion that I do in hunting applies almost 100% to fishing. Even a couple of things that I teach in the course are actually better for fishing. and one of them I'll tell you specifically is better for fishing even than hunting. And so, if that sounds good, we could jump into that.

  Katie

  Yeah, I'm definitely down to start with that. And I'd love to hear all of the different programs you use and kind of how you set them up. 'Cause I use OnX and Google Earth, but I've heard of Gaia, and it sounds like you use that as well. So I'd love to hear about all of them.

  Mark

  Well, let's start with Google Earth Pro. So if you download Google Earth Pro, it's free now, in case you haven't been using it. I mean, most of your people probably understand it and have been using it. It used to be $399. When I started L Cutting, I don't wanna date myself, Katie, but when I started L Cutting, when Google Earth came out, I paid the 399 for this program.

  Katie

  Oh man, that's gotta hurt now.

  Mark

  Oh yeah, not only that, this was back in the 90s. Well, actually it was early 2000s, I guess. But the point is that was a lot of money back then. And nowadays people are complaining about the $29 or on X-Map, it's nothing. Just pay the money and enjoy the tool. But anyway, Google Earth Pro, make sure you get the current version and download the application. For most things that I do, I'll be honest with you, I do recommend Google Earth Pro versus the web-based version of Google Earth. It's not that you can't use the web-based, it works just fine, but I do think there's some features and there's more capabilities and the flexibility is better in the program. And it's free anyway. So I definitely would download the pro version. And then there's some things that you're gonna wanna do right off the bat. In my opinion, Google Earth Pro by itself is not very usable because it's aerial photo only, as everyone probably knows already. So you're gonna be able to look at aerial photos and move around and you'll be able to see some placeholders. I mean, there's some overlays that shows, you know, borders and labels and places down in the layers tab, down at the bottom of the pane that's on the left-hand side of the screen. But for the most part, that's about it. So one of the first things I wanna tell your listeners to do if they don't do this already, or they don't know about this, and maybe you've picked this up on the podcast already, but you wanna download this KLM file called EarthPoint Topo. And maybe we can Google that and get you the actual link to put in your show notes. But Earth Point Topo is a KML file that gives all of the USGS quadrangle topographic maps for the entire, for North America. And when you download that and you put that file, you basically import it into your My Places folder in Google Earth, which is kind of your data. And then as soon as you get that in, it's like gold. You're able to switch from topographic view to aerial photo view and back. You can see the roads, you can see the contour lines, you can see all the placeholders, you can see the trails, all of it. And what you can do, you can also turn off the opacity or you can change the transparency of that EarthPoint topo so you can have kind of what they call a hybrid environment. So you can see the contour lines mixed in with the aerial photos. So this is really key with hunting, but this is also very key for fishing. So having that topographic map overlay along with your aerial photo and be able to turn it on and off at just basically the click of a checkbox is just incredible. And so if you're not doing that, that's the first thing I would do is download that KML file installed in your Google Earth. And that gives you the ability to look at both topographic view and area photo view.

  Katie

  A quick question for you, because I do use Earth Point Topo. But sometimes I find it to be a little bit overwhelming when I have it on the 3D imagery. Do you keep Google Earth as 3D when you're looking at the topo? Or do you turn Google Earth into a 2D and get rid of that relief so you can view it as a flat topo map?

  Mark

  Yeah, so what, great question. So one of the things, again, I don't wanna point people to my course too much, but I go over some very important keystrokes in Google Earth. And one of them, I don't know if you do this a lot, but it's the reset keystroke. It's the R and the U. If you just hit the R, what that does, it resets the tilt and everything to zero, and it orients the map to north. Because when you start tilting the topographic, I mean, sorry, when you start tilting the aerial photo view and then you turn on your topographic view, it looks all wonky. Is that what you're talking about?

  Katie

  Yeah, it's just kind of hard to view a topo map while it's on 3D.

  Mark

  Exactly, so you can leave it in 3D. You just got to reset the tilt.

  Katie

  Right, right.

  Mark

  You can't, you gotta be looking down at a 90 degree angle. And so if you just, and again, instead of going to, basically, if you're looking at your Google Earth menu, you're going to go to view, you're going to go down to reset, and you're going to say reset the tilt and compass. But it doesn't give you the keystroke in the program. I don't know why it doesn't have that, but the keystrokes are R and U. I believe if I'm  I mean, you may have to test this out, but R, I believe, does both. And U only resets the tilt. But you can play around with it, but it's those two keystrokes, R and U. So I try to, when I'm doing most of my work, when I'm looking at rivers and I'm looking at bends in the river, or I'm trying to look, maybe there's some soft water, or I'm looking for spots that I want to hike to from the road. I won't use the tilt very often when I'm trying to switch back and forth. I only get into the tilts when I'm trying to look at like up a Canyon view, or I'm trying to do a three 60 view of some, you know, what I can see from a particular spot, maybe, so that's when I use the tilt and the angle more, but if you keep that tilt reset to reset and you keep your compass oriented to North, it doesn't matter too much about the compass, but then your topo, that earth point will work amazing.

  Katie

  Okay, yeah, I'll have to try those keystrokes. I don't know if you were going to cover this, but one thing I found the other day was that there's a setting you can change in preferences, I think that prevents it from auto tilting, because that was one of my big complaints about Google Earth is like you go to zoom in and it like zooms you down as though you're gliding down onto the earth and you're no longer looking straight down on it. But there is a setting I think you can change that makes it so when you zoom in, it just zooms straight down as though you were looking at Google Maps.

  Mark

  Right.

  Katie

  So that was, that was a big help for me, but I definitely will have to use these keystrokes when it tilts inadvertently.

  Mark

  Yes, absolutely. Turn that, turn that auto tilt off. Um, I can't remember where that's at. Maybe I can figure it. It's it's there's in Google earth. There's only five preference panes. So there's not a whole lot of settings. Um, but so one of the things that you, we talked about briefly was you want to turn off this auto tilt and you it would you ought to set your exaggeration your I'm sorry your elevation exaggeration to it's on the 3d view screen you want to set it to 1.5 so 1 is more of a realistic number and 1.5 slightly exaggerates the terrain a little bit and what it makes it what it does is it helps you see terrain that's a little flatter. It helps you see the undulations a little better. If you're already in really steep country and you don't really need to do this as much, but if you're in a little more flatter area and you'd like to see more of the undulations and you're trying to judge the river, you know, bank steepness and things like that, you might want to set your elevation exaggeration to 1.5, possibly even 2. and kind of play with that setting. And so that will help a lot. That will let you see the slopes with a little more exaggeration. And I hope that helps a little bit on that.

  Katie

  Yeah, it also keeps you humble because the number of times I've looked at a mountain, but like, I'll just walk over that, you know, on my way. And then you get there and you're like, oh man, I can not walk over that. But it looked like just a hill on the map.

  Mark

  That happens in hunting too.

  Katie

  I use it to make sure that things actually look as bad as they're going to be.

  Mark

  OK, so I found it. It's in the fourth tab. It's in the navigation tab under the Preference pane. And under the little navigation thing, it says-- there's a little checkbox. It says, do not automatically tilt while zooming.

  Katie

  OK, yeah, that's the one.

  Mark

  You just check that, maybe, and then you're covered.

  Katie

  And the settings are pretty straightforward, I've noticed. Like you said, there's only a couple of panels. most of the things that they list are something that you can kind of understand just by reading what the label is.

  Mark

  Right, that exaggeration sometimes throws people, they don't quite know what that is. So I'm glad we talked about that. And that tilt, sometimes they don't know that. And Google Earth by default comes with that not turned off. So when you install it, it's gonna automatically tilt as you zoom.

  Katie

  Yeah, it looks like you're 

  Mark

  And that's what 

  Katie

  Oh, go ahead. - I'm sorry,

  Mark

  That's what messes up your topo view a lot too.

  Katie

  Right, and that's why I've had trouble with the topo view before because it's been, you know, I'll turn it on and the map is slightly tilted and then you can only see the lines that are on your side of the hill and it's not particularly useful. But like you said, Google Earth is kind of, I'm glad you mentioned this, that it's kind of useless by itself. It took me a long time to get used to using Google Earth. I used to use Google Maps because of that. It's just kind of an aerial photo And a lot of times that's not that useful if you can't see things marked. So I like that you mentioned this. It's more of a blank slate that you can then deck out with whatever features you want versus like an all-in-one tool from the start. You know, and it's funny,

  Mark

  I tend to spend more time in Google Earth when I'm doing my both hunting and fishing scouting than I do on X-Maps or Gaia GPS. And the main reason is, 'cause I do like the capabilities of the tilt. I do like how quick you can turn on and off that topo layer and one of the biggest things is the resolution is better. In most cases, the zoomed in maximum resolution is better in Google Earth than it is in the applications. When you're really trying to get the fine detail and you're trying to like look at, maybe you're trying to look at rock placement river, you're trying to look and see, you know, you're trying to determine runs and riffles and runs, and you're trying to evaluate that kind of stuff. You really, it's really hard to do unless you can get that maximum zoom capability. And I have noticed lately working on my class, they've got a lot of 2019 aerial images that are uploaded now. And those 19 images are just spectacular. You know, every year and every, the imagery, the cameras, the software that's handling the imagery, just getting better and better. So the imagery is getting better all the time. And so these newer images are just outstanding.

  Katie

  Yeah, I know you said that you've seen elk herds like from Google Earth. Have you gotten a spot in any trout yet? I think that's the next level of aerial imagery that we need.

  Mark

  As big as some of those trout get back in the front and the back end of Slough Creek, I'm not surprised we can't see them. I have not gotten to that level yet. I don't think they're going to ever get to the point that they're going to let the common citizenry look at that level. You'd be spying on your neighbors when they're sunbathing in the backyard.

  Katie

  We can hope, though. Or hope that the fish get big enough that you can see them from space.

  Mark

  Yeah. No, that hasn't happened yet. I do see a lot of my, when I'm scouting, it's funny you said that, 'cause when I'm scouting in Yellowstone, I see bison staying along the river all the time. Oh, really? When I'm doing Google Earth.

  Katie

  So how, oh, so do you have any more specific to Google Earth tricks that you've got?

  Mark

  Yes, I got one more really great one. I don't know if you do this or not, but with hunting, I do this all the time. And with fishing, I do it as well. So what you'll wanna do, and again, You can look at the Google Earth help menu. I know this is a podcast. I know it's hard to kind of visually talk you through this, but you're gonna use the path tool, which is up in the bar. You've got your waypoint tool, then you've got your polygon tool, and then you've got your path tool. Or you can click on the ruler. The best way to do it is just click on the ruler. Let me do it while I'm, so I can say exactly. Click on the ruler and then click on path, okay? And then that's gonna let you trace a route. You can just click, click, click, click, right? So what you're gonna do, Kay, is you're gonna click all the way. Let's say we're scouting this river. And let's say we're gonna look at maybe a two mile or three mile section of this river that we wanna go fish. Let's just say, for example, just did this practice solution, use an example. We were gonna go camping on Rock Creek here in, by Missoula, Montana. It's a blue ribbon fishery, it's outstanding. So I use this path tool and I clicked all down, right down the middle of the river, all the way up the river for let's say two or three miles. And then I saved that path and call it Rock Creek, okay? Then you're gonna go back to Google Earth Pro and you're gonna go to preferences and you're gonna go to touring, okay? And you're gonna make sure your camera tilt angle is set to 60 degrees, and you're gonna set your camera range of about 1200 meters, and you're gonna set your speed to about 600, which is just a little bit past halfway. And again, you could play with these numbers, but those are the ideal settings for me. So 60 degree tilt, 1200 meters range, and 600 slow. I mean 600 is is far speed and you're gonna say okay and then you're gonna go to your path and you're gonna click on your path and then right at the bottom of the places window pane there's an obscure little box on the right hand side that will say play tour and you play tour and what it will do is it will fly automatically to that line and it'll be 1,200 feet up and you'll be looking 60 degrees forward and what it's amazing for fishing because you'll fly it's almost like you're flying right up the river and you're able to look at every bend every corner the structure and you can adjust the speed and you can just fly at the river and take it and you could stop the tour at any point drop away point and continue the tour. And but it's a really helpful tool to just fly up a river and get a look at how it looks from basically the middle of the river looking upstream or downstream whichever direction you're flying from doesn't really matter. But anyway I don't know if you're doing that but it's a great little tool. So I do the same technique for hunting I will do a line throughout some drainages, up through some basins, maybe cross through a saddle, and maybe, you know, want to visit some meadows, and then I'll just step back and I'll maximize my screen, and I'll sit back and just watch it fly, and you'll be surprised at how much information you're just able to gather from sitting back and watching without having to mess with your mouse or anything. So I don't know if you do that, but it's a great tip.

  Katie

  I think I've actually accidentally done that? Like where I've clicked something and then suddenly it's flying me to a place and starting something. I'm like, "Oh, no, I didn't want to do this," but I had no idea what it was doing. I just clicked something. But that's an amazing tip. That's not something I've heard of before. And I feel like not something that you get when you're just looking at some quick tips on Google Earth.

  Mark

  So I'm doing that. I've never seen that tip mentioned, but it's an incredible one. So, you know, obviously if you double click on a point, it will fly to that point. That's obvious. But if you do the path and you double click it, it will fly to the path, but it won't play the tour. You have to hit that play tour little button to have it fly the path.

  Katie

  Now, is this different from a regular line? I'm not in Google Earth right now 'cause I don't wanna overwhelm my computer too much, but I like to trace rivers I've been to just to kind of have a record of them and I'll make notes about them. But are those lines that I'm drawing the same thing as a path or is a path its own tool?

  Mark

  It's it so when you pull, the best way to do it is the ruler, click the ruler icon. So when the ruler icon, when you click that it comes up and gives you some options. You can do a line, like what you mentioned. But a line won't give you the tour. That just gives you a point A to point B and it gives you a distance and that kind of stuff.

  Katie

  Okay.

  Mark

  But the path will allow you to click multiple times, you know, and set the path to go around curves and every, you can click close or you can click far, you know what I'm saying, right? And you just click until you're done. And when you get done with the path and you hit save, and it will save multiple waypoints. Every click that you made will be a different point along the path. And then when you play that tour from the path, it will fly along the path.

  Katie

  I'm going to be flying all over the place tonight. I can't wait to try this out.

  Mark

  Yeah, so the key though, where most people get messed up is the reason that they don't like it or it doesn't jump out at them is to revisit this again, is to set those preferences. Those are critical, 60 degrees, 1200 and 600 to get a start. And then you can play with that. If you want to go a little lower, closer to the river, then drop your range down to 500. you'll get right on, you know, so, so basically what it's simulating, as far as I know, I could be wrong, is it's 1200 meters off the ground. So if you want to be closer to the river, then, but there's, I will tell you, there is a diminishing state of return on some of this stuff. So you could just play with the numbers and get your, get your optimum settings and then you're good to go.

  Katie

  All right, that's awesome. I'm gonna have to try that out. I feel like that's just a great way to, I don't know, feel like you're getting to know the river a little more than just looking at an aerial view.

  Mark

  Well, you know, if you're trying to use Google Earth and you're trying to fly up or fly and just kind of move up the river and you're trying to keep your tilt, you know, every time you move your bowels, you're changing the tilt and you're kind of getting wonky and you start all of a sudden you're tilting a little to the left and a little to the right and it's just not very stable to do it by hand. You know what I'm saying?

  Katie

  Right and then a mountain pops into it. 

  Mark

  That's right. And then you cross over the ridge and now dang it now you can't even see the river.

  Katie

  Right you're flying somewhere like 200 miles away because you accidentally clicked and dragged a little bit.

  Mark

  And that's why the path is so great because you can just set back and just let it do its thing and it won't get off track.

  Katie

  So this is basically what I know we're maybe jumping a little bit ahead here into the actual specifics of looking for fishing spots, but I assume that if you, if you spot a river that looks promising, that you're just kind of throwing one of these paths in and just giving it a quick once over to see if it's maybe worth your time to look into a little more.

  Mark

  Here's a real life scenario that I do all the time. So let's say that we're going to drive to a spot that has a river access and you're just going to go to a river access and you don't know if you really want to head down river or you want to head up river. What I'll do is I'll draw a path both directions, I'll fly it, I'll take a look at it, I'll mark waypoints, and then I'll see which direction has the most waypoints, meaning which side has the most interesting spots. Oh, that's a good tip. And so then that may be my decider. That doesn't mean I won't fish both directions. It just means that, "Hey, I think I'm going to go upriver first because there's more things that jump out at me there than downriver. And so you can also look at, you know, if you're flying, one of the other things, if you set your exaggeration to that 1.5, you're seeing how difficult the river is to access as well. You're not only seeing the river, but you're seeing the exaggerated bank. And so like I fish in, like in Yellowstone, I've done, we do a lot of trips into the the Dark Canyon or the Black Canyon of the Yellowstone. Well, there's places in there. You just can't get to the river. It's too steep, too canyon walls are too steep. And so as you're hiking along that path, I want to know where I need to leave the path to get to those fishing spots so I don't get clipped out. Um, and so I do all that work ahead of time. And then what I'll do is I'll save all those points. Let's say, let's do this rock Creek example. So I've got this whole rock Creek set of data points. I've got the path. I've got all my points, all the things that I want. I'll put them in a folder. I'll create a new folder in Google earth, and I'll drop all those points and the path in the folder. And then you'll click on the folder. This is a key you have to actually click on the folder and then you have to go to file and you have to save as you have to go to save place as it doesn't have an export feature it does but it's not the word exports weird you have to go to file save and then save place as and then when that window will pop a window you'll give it a name and you'll want to save it as a KML not a KMZ save it as a KML file and then you're able to import that folder into on X maps or guy or you want and then you're good to go.

  Katie

  Yeah, I think that's an important point to make too that KML files are kind of king across all these. Especially Well, KMZ,

  Mark

  exactly. KMZ is just a compressed version of the KML. So it's really a similar file, but I have found that these HUNT applications or these outdoor applications, they just don't play very well with the KMZ files.

  Katie

  Okay. They seem

  Mark

  to do better if you do the KML exports out of Google Earth.

  Katie

  Okay. So before we move on to some of the other applications, this might be relevant to both Google Earth and other applications, but how are you organizing your points? Do you have a specific method of organization apart from just exporting and transferring across the different applications?

  Mark

  Yes. Yes, I'm glad you said that. So obviously I do a lot of e-scouting for hunting. And you wouldn't believe, if you could see my Google Earth right now, you'd blow your mind. just so ridiculous. But I've got different folders for different states.

  Katie

  Okay.

  Mark

  And inside those states I've got different folders for different hunting units. And then inside those state folders I've got different folders for fishing units. Not fishing units, but rivers. So I will call it, I will use the word fish - river just so it's easy for me to pick up. And if you always use the word fish, when you sort that folder, if you right click on that folder and sort it, it will always put the fish grouping together, which is really nice. So I mean it's obvious organizational stuff, people can figure that out, but a lot of people just don't take the time to kind of think of the nuances that you can do in Google Earth. So creating folders is really something that you really don't get in the habit of just a bunch of points. Oh, so one of the things I want to How many times have you marked a bunch of points and then opened up Google Earth and they're gone?

  Katie

  0 times because I've listened to your podcast before. So I save a lot.

  Mark

  So when you create a point, depending on where you're clicked, so the way Google Earth works, if you're clicked on a particular folder and then you click the wait icon, it will put that way point or that place mark is what it's called in Google Earth in that folder. But if you're not clicked on anything, a lot of times it will put that stuff in temporary places. That's bad. That's bad. Because Google Earth does not save temporary places. So if it crashes, or Google Earth is really prone to crashing. It just is. I mean, it's just, unfortunately it just does. So you want to move your points, if you want to keep them, out of temporary places, up into your My Places folder, and then you want to have folders within My Places as far as organizational-wise. And just come up with your own scheme. But I do it by state, and then I do it by hunt, and then I do it by fish. And then inside each one of those is the various rivers and/or the various hunting districts. I even go as far sometimes as to do hunt, district, and then species, whether it's elk or deer. So, it gets a little confusing if you're not careful, but it depends on how much organization you want to get. Here's the problem. If you start off with a good, and I can already tell by your podcast information that you're a highly organized individual.

  Katie

  Yes, that is true.

  Mark

  The prep information that you sent me, I'm like, she's already OCD. I can tell. So the more organized you are from the beginning, the more you're gonna love Google Earth. If you just start getting a whole bunch of points, it's just random. And what I like about organizing like this, the way I said, when you do the state and then break it up, you know you can turn folders on and off. You obviously probably know that. So the way Google Earth works is you can turn my places all on and all off if you want, or you can turn on or off those individual folders. So it lets you kind of pick and choose what you're looking at. And so that's kind of the way I approach it. I don't know if that makes sense, if that was a good explanation, but that's how I approach it.

  Katie

  No, it is. And I think one thing that's important to note is that it's not really important how you organize. I think just the fact that you organize is important. 

  Mark

  That's right, exactly.

  Katie

  You know, like I don't hunt as many states as you do. I'm still struggling to hunt my own state. So I don't need multiple states, but I hunt fish and ski. So I've got a different folder for each one of those things where I can mark different things and then subfolders within each of those. But like you said, it can be really overwhelming if you just start making points. That's how my onX gets. I always have to do a clean up. I tend to keep Google Earth pretty organized, but onX, since I'm using it in the field, I'm just marking things down. I see something interesting, I just hit mark waypoint and don't even do anything with it. And then I get home and I've just got a map full of red dots and nothing to say about any of them. I have to go and do like a spring cleaning and get them all put into folders.

  Mark

  So that brings up another good point. This is another thing that crosses over from hunting. This is my class versus fishing and everything else. I have a whole module in this course dedicated to markups, meaning basically data markups that you're putting on your map, how to organize them, how to color code them, so the way I do it is like you just said, when you're using OnX map and you drop a random point, it uses the red icon. Okay? I reserve red for just that purpose. Random pin drops that I don't really have anything planned for, I'm just interested in it, and later I may come back and investigate it. So it just sits there and it's red. So any point that I mark, the moment it becomes important to me, meaning that it's something that I wanna make sure that I keep my record of, I will change the icon, and I will change the color. So when I'm looking at my map and I'm seeing red points, I know those red ones are random points. That doesn't mean they're not meaningless. It just means they're random. You know, need-- if you want a lack of a better word need more investigation. And these other ones have been investigated. There is a purpose for those. and they're all colored by a scheme that I use. And everybody, and again, it's not the scheme, it's that you have one. And so I do the same thing in Google Earth. Google Earth has almost an infinite number of colors and icons, just a really, you wanna really think through your method. I'm not even sure that a little cheat sheet isn't warranted if you really wanna get into this on a whole next level basis. where the yellow pin, that's the normal Google Earth, I treat it just like the red on X-map icon. When I see the yellow, I know it's just a unassociated, I call, unassociated point of interest. And anything that's white or red or blue or has a certain icon, I know those have a particular purpose. But when you're looking at a big map and you got all these random points, it really starts to make a lot of sense if you adopt some type of organizational structure like that.

  Katie

  Now, when you're looking at these, uh, kind of, and, and, uh, unspoken for pins, the, the red ones are the yellow ones in Google earth. Are you, when you're adding them, are you putting a couple of little notes with it so you remember, because my, my big problem is that I'll, I'll do the same thing you do, where I'll mark a bunch of big, I'll just visit this later and edit it. And then I come back and I'm, it's just a red pin with no writing. And I'm like, I, I have no idea what I was looking at here. Like, Yeah, especially if it's something I marked in the field, like maybe it's just a clearing that looked good, but I have no idea what it is when I'm looking at the aerial photo with it.

  Mark

  Yeah, and that's, to be honest with you, that's the reason I adopted this practice because I was, you know, girl, I'm an e-scouting maniac. I mean, I'm on this stuff. I hunt, this year I'm gonna hunt, well, I'm hunting five different states, just for elk. That doesn't even count mule deer and bear and everything else. So the amount of data that I roll into the field with is pretty enormous. And so I had to develop a system that could keep track of this stuff and organize it. So, but yes, when I, so what you're talking about though, is you're kind of saying I'm marking a point, but it means something to me. So you're saying I wanna add some notes, I wanna remember this. I'm not saying I wouldn't keep it yellow or red, I'm just saying the moment you start to add notes to it, you might want to think about changing the icon and the color because it's becoming meaningful to you at that point. Does that make sense?

  Katie

  Yeah, I guess what I'm thinking of is less when I'm actually e-scouting and more, this is more specifically for OnX than Google because Google is, you're using it on your computer at home. But a lot of times for OnX, I'll be walking up a river and I'm like, okay, I'm gonna mark points of interest along this river. Maybe there's a place for me to access the river. So I'll start marking them. But if I come back and look at that via the aerial view, I might not see that the reason I marked it is because there's a little path through the willows from the trail down to the river. And so I just see that point and I don't really know what it was because on the aerial view, it doesn't look like anything. It only means something in the field. And if I'm looking at it from home, which is when I'm gonna be doing the markups, I need some sort of reference to tell me, "Hey, what was this?" And so later I'll come back and color code it and things, I do need to put a couple of notes when it is specifically like a field, a field generated point, because otherwise a lot, a lot of those things you can't see from the aerial imagery. So that's why I find it helpful for me to put just a couple of little notes. I'll just put like access. So that way I know I'm not supposed to be looking for anything. Like apart from that, when I'm, when I'm looking at it on my computer.

  Mark

  No, yeah, I do. I absolutely do do that. And what I'll do a lot of times, I don't know if you use an iPhone or not, but, um, you know, I typing in notes, the pain in the butt, I use the voice recorder. I use the voice text to speech. You know, it doesn't get it perfect, but it gets a good enough. That's going to, you're going to know, you're going to know what you were trying to say.

  Katie

  Right. And half the time you don't type it right either when you're, when you're that's right.

  Mark

  So I will do that. I will hit the note. I will hit the waypoint, hit the edit, hit the note, and then hit that microphone the time and I'll say hey this is a good access spot I need to best get this further whatever and then and then I might go back and clean it up later if I want to whatever the case but yeah I do that all the time while I'm hunting a fish you know up and down like you said the bank but again what's nice about let's say you did this ahead of time okay and you had your different colors up and down the river so you know you know you try to lose whatever for fishing, you've got your fishing spots are blue, let's just say, and you've got your rock creek and you've got a bunch of blue spots and then you start seeing a bunch of red spots. You know that you just dropped those red spots so they don't get mixed in with the spots that you quote "pre-done at home" if you did like pre-scouting of this river. So having this organization or having some organizational theory behind your madness really makes you more efficient in the, you know, when you're out in the field.

  Katie

  It definitely does.

  Mark

  I can't tell you, it's been a game changer. I used to not do this. And one of the things, I don't want to be negative about anything, but one of the downfalls of Onx Maps is, and now I think it's coming, I've heard rumors, you know, I'm in the Onx capital of the world, their headquarters is here in Missoula, so I get some rumors here and there. This is unsubstantiated, by the way, but I hear they are about to introduce the folder option, which I have been dying and screaming for.

  Katie

  Thank God. I said that in years ago as a request and I've been waiting eagerly for it.

  Mark

  So I use Gaia GPS probably as much or more than I use OnX. It is an incredibly powerful tool. If you are going into the national parks, I'm just going to say this, if you're going into the national parks or you're going any place that Trails Illustrated, I don't know if you've ever seen the trails illustrated map, but they're probably some of the best topographic navigational, just, you know, more complete with camping and river accesses and information than any other map I've ever seen prepared by trails illustrated. They Gaia has a new map layer that's for its trails illustrated has all of their maps. is unbelievable. It has every campground, it has all the requirements, every campground in Yellowstone and Rocky Mountain National Park, all of them. So it is all, it's invaluable to me and I can't even stress that enough and Gaia does have the folder structure. So it's you know, it's a free, you can go to GaiaGPS.com, try it for free and see what to think it's cheaper, it's a little cheaper, $39 a year for every state, the whole country versus the $99 with onX. OnX has the $29, $29.95 for one state. But I love them both. I have them both. I will not go into the field without both of them. So I'm just going to be honest. But when it comes to data organization, they don't have the folder structure. Number Trails Illustrated, National Forest, not National Forest, but National Parks map layer, which is really incredible. You should check that out for sure.

  Katie

  Yeah, I'll have to give Gaia a try. I know I've got some friends who use it, but I wasn't sure the functionality with, a lot of the friends I have that use it are just like hikers and climbers. So I wasn't sure because Onx has a lot more of the like the hunting specific things that I like to use.

  Mark

  Gaia has all of it now, all the units, all the everything.

  Katie

  Oh really, okay.

  Mark

  public land, it has, it has, now I will tell you Onx when it comes to public land, the way it's organized and the way the borders show and just the clarity of it, Onx is king when it comes to private land navigation.

  Katie

  Okay, yeah, that's the other big thing I love it for.

  Mark

  Yeah, me too, me too. If you're dealing with private land and kind of trying to work around that, then Gaia has it, it has it. But I think Onx is a little, is a little better. But what Gaia has that Onx does not have, besides the folder, which I just absolutely have to have, is they have the pure USGS topographic layer. It is not a hybrid. The Onx version is a hybrid topographic layer. It doesn't have the detail that a pure USGS topographic map has. So I love Gaia for that layer. And, you know, Onx has three layers. They have the satellite view, they have the hybrid, and they have the topo. And then they have different, you know, different sub layers you can turn on, like fires and game management units and all kinds of stuff. But Gaia has, I don't know, Katie, probably 10 different topographic maps, probably eight different satellite photo layers. It's just, it's a little more overwhelming to get to use. But once you learn it, it's got so many capabilities. So there's pluses and minuses. If you want it easier to use, quick and easy, and you do a lot of private land navigation, OnX is your tool. If you really want to get into the weeds and really look at a lot of different topographic layers, you want to look at national park layers, and you want to be able to organize things by folders, maybe Guy is your thing. If you totally geek out on this stuff and you want to have the maximum advantage, no matter where you go, then you need to get both.

  Katie

  Okay. I might have to do that and just get both. I'm not gonna be leaving it on X anytime soon, but I'm always a sucker for getting more tools that I can play around with. So I'll check out Gaia and maybe see how to combine that.

  Mark

  Hey, don't get me wrong. I'm a huge onX fan, Katie. I just re-upped my membership today. I'm a huge, huge fan of their product.

  Katie

  Well, I think that's an important point is that none of these things does everything. Google Earth would be kind of a pain if you were trying to do everything with it because you can't really take it in the field. So when I'm at home, I'm on Google a lot. But I'm using it with OnX usually because of that private land. I don't know if there's maybe a KML of private land you can import into Google, but it seems like something you'd have to redo every year because property bounties change and things.

  Mark

  That's right. But there is layers, yes. There is layers you can get for that. KML layers for private land, yes.

  Katie

  But yeah, like all these things, they each have their own purpose and I feel like they're all best used in conjunction with everything else. Have them all pulled up and, you know, even the satellite imagery is going to be different. I know you said that Google has the best resolution, but there's also times where maybe the image that they have in Google was in the winter or something and on X is in the summer or vice versa.

  Mark

  That's right. Well, you know, it's funny you bring up, that's a great point. So in the course, I found out, you know, I've always known that, but when I started filming my modules, it just started, the issue became glaring. So I had some of these sample areas and I had it pulled up on Google Earth at the highest resolution. One of the other things I love about Google Earth, it gives you the date of the photo. And it has a historical timeline, you know that you can go back and look at older photos if you want to. And so I really love that feature in Google Earth. But I was looking at the most recent version, I was looking at a trailhead And I was trying to evaluate how much pressure this trail has gets for potential hunting access. Is it, is there like 50 horse trailers going to be there or is there going to be, is it a small parking area or a big parking area, you know, whatever. So I zoomed in on it with Google earth and there was a white truck or a white truck park there, I pulled up Gaia. There was a blue car there. I pulled up on X and there was no vehicles there. So between the three different applications, I had three different views of the same trailhead. And what was interesting about that was I could see a horse corral in one of them, but I couldn't see it in the other two. So it let me know that maybe there's some, you know, a little bit of horse activity, not that I wouldn't go there, but it's good information to know. But if I would have only looked at one option, I wouldn't have been able to uncover that little piece of information.

  Katie

  And also probably important that you didn't see more than one vehicle in any of the photos. You know, if you could look at one and there's one vehicle and then you look at another and there's 30 vehicles, but you know, maybe you wouldn't have guessed that it was that busy just by looking at the one that has a single vehicle.

  Mark

  That's right. And especially that, that's where Google Earth shines. You know, you, let's say you look at Gaia, there's 10 cars there. Well, is that July or is that hunting season? Is that October? And so then I immediately will jump to Google earth and look at their imagery. So if I could, if it just so happens, it pulls up a, uh, a September 15 during archery season, it pulls up September 15th and there's no vehicles there. I'm like, Oh, boom. Now that doesn't mean there's not going to be anybody there. Let's be honest. But I pulled up other trail heads, no exaggeration, 25 horse trailers parked there.

  Katie

  Yeah. Probably not where you're going to want to go.

  Mark

  Like if you got a backpack on your back, I'm like, yeah, maybe I'm going to look for another spot. But these are all things I teach in my course that apply to fishing too, you know. And if you can see obvious pull-off spots along the river, you know that people are going to be parked there. If you can find a bend in the river that looks like there might be some soft water just downstream of that, and then you go out to the road, let's say the road's a quarter mile away, and you can't find any pull-off spots on the road with the maximum Google Earth zoom, you might be able to make the assumption that this spot doesn't just get pounded on at least, but if you see a couple pull-off spots, and then you see the bend, that doesn't mean you wouldn't fish it. It just means that you can, you know, I call it evaluating the pressure. I have a whole module dedicated to it through not only looking at trailheads and parking spots, but we look at trails. How can we see the trail, Google Earth? How clear is it? Is there grass growing up in the trail or does it look bright, meaning it's dirt? Those can tell you a lot about how much you can make some assumptions, not guarantees, but you can make an assumptions based on pressure, based on the maximum zoom imagery when you look at it. But one of the things I want to point out, Katie, is that you cannot do in the field. The zoom capabilities of the downloaded maps and the offline views do not have the quality to get into that kind of detail. So if you're going to try to evaluate pressure and look at trails and and really look at things like in that kind of close-up, you need to do it before you head out. In most cases, most cases.

  Katie

  This is a perfect segue into to kind of the next topic I wanted to tackle, which is less about the actual functionality of the programs and more like what you're looking for when you're looking for a fishing spot. I know that it's a little bit different than something like hunting because, for example, for hunting, you're looking for places that might hold elk. What features or topographical areas are going to bring elk to them? But fish are stuck in the water they're in. So you're looking for water. What are you looking for when you're evaluating these different spots? If you see a bit of water on the map, be it a river or a lake, what is it that goes through your head to evaluate whether that's a spot worth hitting compared to something like hunting where you're trying to figure out what's going to draw animals in? For fishing, you don't need to look for that. So what are you looking for?

  Mark

  Well, I mean, honestly, I kind of approach it the same way. I mean, I'm looking for features that when I'm hunting, I'm looking for features, I call them in the course, I call them elk finding concepts or elk finding features. I look for certain things that I know that attract and hold out. You know, the meadows, obviously feeding zones. I look for benches and saddles and canyons with no trails and blah, blah, blah. There's just a, you know, not a, I wouldn't say not a limitless, but there's a finite group of data or types of terrain features or habitats, so to speak, that I'm looking for. And what I'm looking for is areas that have multiples of those. I call it in the course, I call it odds multipliers. So when I see five or six of these features in the same area, I know that there's something interesting going on here. So in fishing, I'm doing kind of the same thing. So the first thing I I will kind of want to do is that flyover like I mentioned. And what I'm looking for is I'm looking for those runs and riffle and pool transitions. You know, and it's not hard to tell that from an aerial photo, especially Google Earth, because it's really important. The date of the photos is important because you can kind of predict runoff times. You can-- like in Montana, you know, The runoff is a real serious issue here. And we're just now into the, I mean, we had some 80 degree day, so the fishing is pretty much over, except for the more dam control type rivers. But, so we're waiting for the snow melt. So if you're looking at rivers in Montana in May, you're not gonna get a good look at what they're gonna be looking like in August or September. So that's where Google Earth comes in for me, As far as the dates are concerned, so I pay attention to the dates, depending on what you're looking at. If you're in Missouri or in your other spots in the country that you don't have the runoff issues, it obviously will be more dependent on water levels and flows, of course, but it's a lot more realistic. So I look for, you know, I love fishing runs that turn into riffles, you know, where you You get the calmer water that's more undulating, that's a little deeper running over large rocks, and it's creating this undulating current. And then it transitions to more, I call it the diamond water or that riffle water where it becomes a lot more shiny water. I love fishing those transitions. So I look for those, especially in, you know, that's one of my top features. And you know, if I'm wanting to streamer fish, or I'm wanting to, you know, whatever I'm doing, I'll look for the more deeper pools. I'll look for the calmer water. I'm looking for the water that looks like it's just not moving very much. It obviously is, but on Google Earth, you can pick some of this up. And depending on the quality of the photos and when they were taken, of course, a lot of factors. But, so I really spent a lot of time on that flyover looking for just kind of the general. A lot of times I will do a general fly over and get kind of the lay of the land, so to speak. And then I'll go back and start looking at a little more microscopically. So I love big rivers. And when I'm looking at bigger rivers or bigger creeks, I'm looking for bends. I really love fishing the downstream of the bend. And I love fishing that riffles, real powerful riffles or even much more turbulent water when it starts to calm. So that's one. And I'm looking at the headwaters. So I really zero out riffles, I guess is what I'm saying. I really like fishing above the fast water and I like fishing below the fast water, both. So I focus on those. And if I'm streamer fishing, like I said, I'm looking for the deeper pools. I don't know if that starts to begin to answer your question but those are things I'm drilling in on.

  Katie

  No, it does. And do you fish lakes much? And how does that differ since you're not looking for those currents?

  Mark

  Well, on the lakes, I don't have a lot. I do fish some lakes in the outside. We pack into it. But most of the ones we're packing into are pretty deep lakes. And one of the things I do look for is I try to look for inlets. I really find that the high mountain lakes are particularly good where there's water is coming into the system. And so if you can find where the springs or where the runoff is entering, and a lot of times in these basins, it's coming in multiple places. And if you can identify those and mark those, so that as you're walking around a lake, you can get right to those spots and you've already got it pre-identified. And you also, I mean, it's tough to tell sometimes, but the clarity of these mountain lakes, you can see the bottom and a lot of them, and you can start to judge the depths. And, you know, like any fishing, if you can fish the transition areas, if you can reach them, if you're fly fishing or whatever type of fishing you're doing, if you can analyze the, where the breaks are from the shallow to the deep, and you can kind of draw a line on those and you kind of know where they're at in the lakes before you get there, very powerful stuff. And so with lakes, I typically will look at just a couple of things to be honest. I will look at the marshy areas, the low water, for where there might be some more prolific hatching going on. I will look at the water inlets that are coming into the lakes. And I will try to look at the depth, make a little bit of depth analysis if it's possible. Sometimes they're just too bright green or too bright blue with the reflection to be able to do it. But if you can, it's a very good tool.

  Katie

  Yeah, I noticed that finding shelves can be really easy with aerial imagery. And a lot of times those are, you know, wadable. You can just wait out to the edge of the shelf and that's where they're going to be hanging out right off the edge of that.

  Mark

  That's right. Exactly. Draw a line on the shelf. And what's nice about that line is as you're waiting out, you know, how close you're getting to it. So you don't even have to get to it. You can cast to it. Once you see yourself in the proximity of that shelf.

  Katie

  Oh, that's a good tip. Yeah. I've never done that.

  Mark

  Yeah. So that's what I'm talking about doing the stuff ahead of time. So that it's a little more usable for you when you're in the field. Um, cause you don't like fishing, as you know, those fish are, they they're just much spookier. And especially in the, in the shallower type stuff. So the more stuff you have marked that you can, if you want to call it hunting, that you can slip up on a little more stealthier, uh, the better chance you got than just busting on in there and not knowing kind of where you're at. So the shelf identifying those shelves is really a great thing, especially if, um, you know, the lakes just don't change much as far as topography, those high mountain lakes are going to be some change, but for the most part, they're a little more predictable than. At least in Montana with the snowmelt different times of year with the photos.

  Katie

  Yeah. And I guess when I've never actually done this, but you just made me think of it when we were talking about the changing the different times, you can view things through the historical data to try to figure out when they ice off because that's a big thing here. It's like, I don't wanna hike up to a lake if it's potentially still completely iced over, but I also don't wanna miss it. I wanna catch it right when it's thawing out.

  Mark

  Well, here's another, then I'm gonna give you another great tip. I'm gonna say this slow so you guys can write this down, but you're gonna wanna Google N-O-H-R-S-C, snow model snapshot. And what that does, it shows you the current snow levels. And it's done by aerial photo analysis. And I think it's done by heat mapping. I'm not sure how they do it, but it is so daggum accurate. I don't know how they get it this accurate, But you could, you know, for bear hunting, for example, I really love bear hunting and bear meat's one of my favorite meats. But spring, hunting these suckers is so dependent on the snow, retreating snow. And I wanna be, I don't wanna be right on the snow line. I wanna be about five or 600 elevation feet below that snow line. 'Cause in my experience, that five or 600 feet and the amount of time it takes that snow to melt, again, this all depends on how warm it is, et cetera. The green grass and the little sprouts will be the most supple and they'll be the most tender at that level. So I will spend some time on this snowpack analysis. And there's a KML file that you can download that has that.

  Katie

  No way. I know we're not done with this talk yet, but I'm gonna go out and let us say that you may have just given me the best tip that you're gonna give me. I've been wanting a tool to deal with snow like this. And I think I'm going to be hopping on immediately after this call to check it out.

  Mark

  Well, that's another reason you're going to want Gaia. 'Cause Gaia has that layer built into their program.

  Katie

  Oh, really? Okay.

  Mark

  Yeah. So you can get the KML file for Google Earth, but you can also get the layer in Gaia that you can take in the field.

  Katie

  And I assume that for Google Earth, you're going to need to reload it every time to get the change. Whereas something like Gaia is probably going to give you the most updated one, the same way like Onx shows current wildfires or whatever.

  Mark

  It's going to cache it. Yeah, it's going to cache it. I think. I don't know the term that's used, but the best way to do it is in Google Earth because it's a KML layer that draws it automatically from the internet.

  Katie

  Oh, okay.

  Mark

  So it's like, you don't have to re-download it every time. It's drawing the new data. I believe I need to double check that this is a new find for me. This is only less than a year old for me.

  Katie

  Okay. Cause yeah, maybe there are, cause I was under the impression that most of these files you download it and then that was a snapshot at the time that you downloaded it and you'd have to update it, but maybe there are ones that can like link out to the internet and an update,

  Mark

  but like this snow model snapshot that I told you, this has got snow depth, it's got snow cover, It's got snow density. It's got a snow melt. It's got all these folders you can turn on and off. It's crazy how much data is there.

  Katie

  Can you repeat it one more time just to make sure I got it right.

  Mark

  If you Google it's N O H R S C snow model snapshot.

  Katie

  Perfect.

  Mark

  And there's a couple out there. So if you, if you just, I think if you just did Google earth KML snow layers as well. You'll get the various ones that are out there, but this NOH RSD one seems to be a pretty good one. Like for example, what I'm looking at here, I don't know that it does update because I think you may have to download it each time, which is no big deal. It's real fast. Because the one I'm looking at is dated 5/5/20, which is... Oh, what am I saying? That is correct. That's today.

  Katie

  All right.

  Mark

  Oh, I thought that was, yeah. Are you kidding me? Well, I just answered my question. So it updates automatically because I downloaded this months ago. So yeah, there you go.

  Katie

  Perfect. Yeah. Learn something new. I didn't realize it would update.

  Mark

  Yeah. So anyway, I like that capability for, that's a good tip for that I haven't really talked about on many podcasts for if you have any bear hunters. Nobody talks about that. That's probably the first time you've ever heard that mentioned.

  Katie

  Yeah, yeah. I have. And I know that turkey hunters want to follow the snow line too. So I'm sure that's useful to a whole bunch of people. And like I said, for me, it's just, I love going up to the Alpine lakes and I want to hit them right around ice off. So you might be able to see maybe once, I'm sure they stay icy. Well, I guess, I don't know. Cause I'm not usually up there right when it's starting to ice off, but you could probably see just a bright patch there if it's still got ice on it.

  Mark

  Well, the other thing they have, so you can couple this, Katie, is not only can you download the snow KML, but you can also download surface temperature.

  Katie

  Oh, perfect. Yeah.

  Mark

  So that's not going to be perfect, but it's going to give you some ideas that you could start making some assumptions, I like to say that word, of the ice off. Like you said, it kind of sucks if your favorite lake is six miles up and you keep hiking up there and it keeps being frozen.

  Katie

  You can only do that so many weekends in a row before you're going to give up.

  Mark

  You want to kind of narrow things down a little bit. But I really like those layers.

  Katie

  That's an awesome tip. I can't wait to check that one out. That's exactly the kind of stuff that I wanted to have you on to talk about because, like I said, you're probably one of my favorite guests on most of the hunting podcasts that on just because you have so many of these little tips that they don't seem like much. It's just a single layer or a single tool that you can toggle on and off. But sometimes a single thing like that can make a world of difference. It doesn't have to be a major feature for it to completely change how you're using a tool.

  Mark

  Okay, one, I'm old, so I have a lot of experience. (laughing) Two, I come from an IT background. So I'm kind of a strange hunting, fishing person because I'm an IT, heavily IT focused guy, but at the same time, I'm kind of this remote back country guy, and I love fly fishing. Not as much as elk hunting, but it's probably my number two. And it's kind of how I get in shape for elk hunting. And so, you know, it's a kind of a nice marriage for me. And that's really what the, well, and I already mentioned, I'm from Missouri. you're not going to be successful, you know, I always say in my course, if you, you know, elk hunting is about, you know, and I know you're figuring this out, is about a 10% success rate for public land, do-it-yourself elk hunters. The average is roughly about 10%. And I say in my course over and over, if you want to be a 10% success elk hunter, then you can just keep acting like a 10% success elk hunter. But if you start to learn these tools and you not only learn to them but you learn how to really use them. I mean how many of your listeners use Google Earth and they say I got it I know everything but I know how to use Google Earth but after just listening to a few things maybe they don't. Maybe they didn't know about the snow layer, maybe they didn't know about the earth point, maybe they didn't know about the folders, maybe they didn't know about the export, maybe they didn't know why they kept photos, you know, turning on the photo layer down in the very bottom of Google Earth. And if you're in a popular spot, there is always a photo of that lake. And I look at those all the time. It gives you an idea of what you're looking at. You know, people have been real good about taking photos and posting them to Google Earth. And you can just turn on that photos with one click of the button. turn on all the photos throughout the whole area. And here's another tip. If you got a lake that's got 25, 30 photos of it, it's going to be a busy lake. If you find a lake that has no photos taken of it, there might not be any fish, but there also might not be anybody there. I mean, not many people. So I use them in hunting. I look for those. This is another tip that works for fishing. I teach my participants to look for these clusters of photos. That's going to give you an indication of pressure, even if it's only, now let's face it, hunters don't post a lot of hunting pictures on Google Earth. So you're not going to see that, but it does give you an idea of recreational use pressure. So this is particularly applicable to fishermen, is looking at those photos. That doesn't mean you don't want to go. But you know, like all these things that we're talking about, these are all things that I like to analyze so that I'm getting a well-rounded look at what I'm getting into. It doesn't mean that I'm not going to go. It just means I need to understand what's the road look like, how many parking spots along the road, what's the river look like, we're doing the flyovers, how many photos have been taken of of this area. And it starts to paint a pretty, look at the snow pack, it starts to create a pretty good little picture for you, if that makes sense.

  Katie

  Yeah, and I think it might be a little bit different between fishing and hunting just because a lot of people, when they're going out for a hike or something, their destination is to get to a body of water. Like a lot of trails lead to water. Whereas for hunting, you're trying to get as far away from those trails and those hot spots. And fishing, you're kind of by default often going, unless you're going to like a remote mountain stream, a lot of those lakes are the destination for hikers. So I guess ideally, you get to a spot that does have a photo or two so you can look at it and assess it, but not one that has so many photos that you realize that you're just gonna be shoulder to shoulder with other people, probably a popular fishing spot too. Do you happen to know if the photos in Google Earth are the same ones that are in Google Maps? Because I know if you go to Street View, if you click on the Street View in Google Maps, it'll show you wherever anyone is taking a picture, and that's including the streets, the Google streetcar or whatever is driving. But they also include, I guess, user submitted photos.

  Mark

  They are the same photos. They are the same photos. 'Cause if you expand the folder in Google Earth, it will say Google Maps photos.

  Katie

  Okay, okay, that answers my question. 'Cause yeah, I always do it on Google Maps just 'cause it's a little, I like having the ability to turn off the satellite view for some of those so I can see where all the photos are. But that's good to know that they're the same ones.

  Mark

  Yeah, and it doesn't always have the date. I don't know. So Google Earth, I really haven't spent a lot of time lately analyzing the process, but there's an old photo layer and there's a new photos layer. And I'm not sure if both exist on the same, But just keep in mind, I need to do some more investigation to this, but just a few years ago, or even not that long ago, Google switched from their traditional way of doing photos to this newer way. And I'm not sure what that means. Their photos are still there, and it does list them as Google Maps photos. But I don't know if that includes the old and the new, but it doesn't really matter. I mean, it shows the photos in all the spots But again, you know, not many people take the time to do this. So when you see a lot of photos, that usually can indicate some pretty significant pressure, as you said.

  Katie

  Mm-hmm. Now, I don't want to keep you too long, but I do have a couple more questions just regarding like finding fishing spots. The first one that I think might be kind of quick is, I know, is it top rut that you use in conjunction with this for hunting?

  Mark

  Top rut, yeah. Very powerful.

  Katie

  When you're looking for fishing spots, one of the hard parts about finding some of these remote spots is that you don't know for sure if there are going to be fish there. You can make some reasonable assumptions. Like you said, I always look for inlets because I assume that can probably hold fish. I look for lakes that aren't too shallow, thinking that they won't freeze over or freeze completely through. But do you have any outside resources that you're using specifically to find out if there's going to be fish in a certain spot?

  Mark

  It's funny you said that because I'm planning a trip right now that for some clients that are renting some llamas that are going to go to the lake. And one of the things in Montana, for example, in most states, well, every state has it. It just they, I'll be honest with you, some states make it a little harder, but if you can't find it, make a phone call. This is public information. This is not something that quote can be held or kept from you. But every state, especially these Western states, they have a stocking program for these mountain lakes. And they have detailed records, not only when they stock, but what length of fish they stock. What length they stock, what date they stock, how many they stock. And so I really dial into those. That doesn't mean there's not going to be fish in lakes that they don't mention. The other thing, if you Google the lake name and the state, you know, don't just Google the name but you do all the and it even to go a little further because a lot of these lakes are named the same of course so Google the lake the state and the county that's a good way to get drilled into that lake a lot of times you'll find reviews that people have written that they've fished and they didn't see any fish rising and blah blah blah and it's gold information so but the key is getting that name drilled down but I found that if you do the name the state in the county, it's pretty daggum specific. And, or even the National Forest, if like, for example, if you did Mystic Lake, Beaverhead, National Forest, Montana, it's gonna bring up the Bright Lake, probably. And you can read reviews about it, but I also would look at the stocking reports and see how many years it's been since they stocked it, or if they've ever stocked it. So I don't know if that answers your question, But those are two great ways that I use.

  Katie

  Yeah, that does answer my question. And I know each state will probably be a little bit different too in that beyond the stocking reports, I know here in Colorado, they have a database of just it's by no means all inclusive. It probably only includes a small fraction. But they do have an interactive fishing atlas, I think they call it, where you can click on different lakes and things. And it'll just tell you what species are present. So your state might have something similar to that where they do list a couple of the spots and what's in them.

  Mark

  Yeah, they have that. But I more particularly, I really like those stocking reports 'cause what you'll start to see is trends. Like they'll start to stock them like five years apart, four years apart. And then I just noticed this lake that I was looking at, they stock 14 inch fish. And I'm like, that's rare. I don't see that that often. And I'm like, man, I'm hitting that. I think it was 2018 or maybe 19. So, you know, obviously they don't grow fast in those mountain lakes. And they get, you know, they probably get more stunted out and more limited in those lakes. But still, I was glad to see it. And if I wouldn't have spent much time, you know, I may not have known that. So there's a lot of things available. And, but I do love those stocking reports and that's public data. I mean, they pretty much, that stuff is available even if you have to request it. And those are good tips.

  Katie

  Yeah, one of the thing I'd mentioned that I just remembered that I sometimes do is don't limit yourself to like websites that are specifically talking about fishing. Like I know I'll go on all trails sometimes if it's a popular lake. 

  Mark

  Exactly.

  Katie

  And just read people's reviews because a lot of times, even if they weren't fishing, they'll be like, "Oh yeah, "there were lots of people fishing there." And that'll give you an indication, not only of the amount of pressure, but let you know that, okay, if there's three guys fishing there, there's probably fish in there. You don't know what it is, but you know that there's something worth catching.

  Mark

  Well, and you're right, all trails is really good. And the other thing all trails is good about is the difficulty, just kind of rating the difficulty to the lake.

  Katie

  Yeah, yeah.

  Mark

  Now, one of the things that I like to do is, this is another plug for Google Earth, is trace the route in or trace a path. We talked about how to do the path. So you'll trace the trail in and then click on show elevation profile. And it'll show you the ups and downs of the whole path. And OnX doesn't do that. I wish they had it, they don't. That's another feature I wish they'd add. And Gaia does have that ability. show you the elevation profile. So that can tell you what you're dealing with. Do you got super steep sections? Are these are pretty gradual all the way up? How many, what's your average slope? You know Google Earth has a lot of data. It tells your average slope. It tells you your, you know, your total elevation up, your total elevation down. It gives you quite a bit of data when you look at the elevation profile of Google Earth. So don't forget that tip well.

  Katie

  Oh I didn't, I didn't know that for Google Earth. I know OnX has like the, it's got a that shows the, it's like a color gradient of like green to red that, you know, it shows the trail and basically how aggressive your hiking's gonna be at any spot. But it's not really specific to like amount of elevation gain or gives you that like sideways profile or anything like that. It just shows you, you know, this red part of the trail is gonna be a more intense hike than the green part of the trail. So I'll just try that on Google Earth and see what that's like.

  Mark

  Yeah, so what you wanna do is you'll do that same path I told you about, but it won't show you until you create it. So you have to create it and then save it. And now you've got this red path on your screen. And then you're gonna right click, you're gonna right click on it. And it's gonna say show elevation profile. And then it's gonna give you your total distance. It's gonna give you your elevation gain loss. It's gonna give you your max slope degree. It's gonna give you your average slope degree. And then as you drag along the elevation profile, it'll show you where you're at on the line. It's freaking amazing.

  Katie

  That's awesome. You've opened my eyes to so many Google earth tools today.

  Mark

  Well, I use, I use that hunting cause you know, hunting for llamas with my llamas, I got to really analyze like, am I going to getting, am I getting into, cause we do off trail a lot. And so when I'm going off trail, I got to make sure we're not getting clipped out. I got to make sure we, you know, we can do some pretty steep stuff, but once it gets to a certain degree or a certain percentage, I got to be a little more, I might need to look at an alternate route. Well that's really hard to tell with what you can't tell it with onX. Now onX has the red, green, yellow, but that's just kind of an estimated kind of thing.

  Katie

  That's good for a quick glance when you want to see is this going to be a hard hike or an easy hike? Oh, it's mostly red or it's mostly green. I use that, you know, when I'm in the field and I just want to know, okay, should I go on this trail or this trail? Oh, this one looks a little bit easier. Um, when you don't need that detail.

  Mark

  But in Google earth, when you drag along the profile, you're going to love this. When you drag along the profile, it'll give you the slope at that particular point. So everywhere along that path, along that path, you can see every slope degree of every point. Now, when I say point, I don't mean way point. I mean, as you're dragging, it changes live. So it's, I'm surprised that more people don't realize it's there, but here's the problem with it. It's not available. I don't think unless they've added it in this last version, let me look real quick. This is why most people don't know it exists. Yeah, it's not there. You can't see it. It's not a menu item. It has to be done with the right click. So that's why people probably don't know it exists. A lot of people don't and it's show elevation profile, but you have to create the path first, then once it's saved, then go back and say, show elevation profile. That's okay.

  Katie

  Yeah. I've never seen that, but probably cause I haven't right. Clicked. I know all trails has a, a similar, um, I don't think it gives you like the, the slope angle at any particular point, but it gives that good, uh, like overview where it shows from start to finish what the elevation is. And so you can see, does it go up and down a lot? Does it go up to a peak and then back down? And I really like looking at that just to get an idea of what the hike's gonna be like along the way. So I do use all trails quite a bit, actually, especially because, like we mentioned before for fishing, a lot of these places are destinations for trails. Like the trail leads to the spot you're gonna fish. So that's actually really helpful if you are gonna be staying on trail the whole way. There's often a resource that will show you what that trail is like from start to finish.

  Mark

  Well, so I don't want to be a, I don't want to give a shameless plug. So I've already gave a lot of onX plugs because you know how much I do like onX, but Gaia, there's two things about Gaia that are incredible with what you just said. So on these trails that are established, like, you know, on the USGS topographic map, there's a trail that leads from the trailhead to mystic Lake. Okay. Like you said, most of these lakes all have trails going to them. I mean, you're not going to find very many that don't. So all you have to do with Gaia, which is so amazing, let's say it's 10 miles. It would take you a few minutes in Google Earth and in OnX to click, click, click, click, and kind of follow that path. And you're never going to be able to follow it really perfectly. You know what I'm saying? So with Gaia, they have this it's called Snap To function. You can click on the trailhead, and then click on the lake, and it will snap the line to the trail. It is incredible. And so then you've got your whole path marked to the trail, to the lake, and then you can click on that and look at the profile with two clicks and it's done.

  Katie

  That's pretty awesome.

  Mark

  Instead of click, click, click, click, you know, to create a path. So you can do it multiple ways, but if you really do a lot of hiking, let me put it this way. If you hike to a lot of lakes and you fish and you go to a lot of rivers and you're looking to get the access points and what the, and really make sure you have those identified, especially if you're a boat or a drip boat or a rafter guy as the king. I mean, it's just the king with the snap to function of trails with being able to look at elevation profiles and, um, and, and those kinds of tools, it's just, it's just hands down, it's, it just dominates. But again, I use them all. And that's, you know, it's like, I guess I'll use this analogy. If you were a carpenter, Katie, would you go to build a house and only take a hammer with you?

  Katie

  No.,

  Mark

  You know, you need multiple tools to build a house. And when you're doing fishing on the level we're talking about, and when you're hunting on the level we're talking about, I feel strongly that you need multiple tools in your toolbox to do it at the maximum high end level. And why would you want to, I'm sure you want to harvest an elk. I mean, you're not going out there just to, I mean, I'm sure you love it out there, but your primary goal is you'd like to put some meat in the freezer, I'm sure. So why would you want to decrease your odds by not knowing, not having this information? So learning these, I guess the last thing I'll leave your listeners with is learning these programs, Google Earth, Gaia GPS, OnX Maps, really taking them to the next level is going to do nothing but increase your odds to do, to find better fishing, to have better, you know, better success there, and in particular hunting. And the tools are available and the people that are using them, their odds are way higher than yours if you're not using Let me just put it that way.

  Katie

  Yeah, and not to mention that I feel like for most people that like recreating outdoors, this is fun. It's not a chore to go on and browse maps. I love sitting down for a couple hours and just scrolling around. So having multiple tools is just like, "Great, when I'm done with one, I get to go on the next one and see what's different." It's a fun activity. It's not a hindrance to have multiple things to play around with.

  Mark

  Well, they're not difficult. It's just, I'm hoping this podcast is going to get people energized and it's given them a lot of things to think about, that's for sure, and some things to explore and make them look a little deeper into a lot of programs. It's like Word. I mean, how many people open up Word and they type a letter? They don't even realize all the functionality that Word has. Now Excel is a whole other beast.

  Katie

  Oh, yeah.

  Mark

  So my point is Google Earth and on X now they're not at the level probably of those programs But there's a lot more intricacies to these things as we're finding out today on the podcast and what a lot of people may may believe Yeah, I think a lot of these things just aren't obvious No, and they're not in manuals. It's funny. Like I've read the user manuals Okay, you have a lot of these things a lot of this stuff just really isn't really addressed at least it's not addressed in a way That really presents it to the outdoorsman. Does that make sense? It's written more in a technical way.

  Katie

  Yeah

  Mark

  and it doesn't really Like elevation exaggeration if you read that in the manual you never would probably Relate it to hey, that's gonna help me see the train a little better than I don't it's not gonna say that it's gonna say that it's gonna do this technical thing in this technical thing and Really? The reason it was created I think was first cityscape analysis. When like city planning and looking at skylines and you know high-rises and buildings, I believe that a lot of this exaggeration stuff was built for not only terrain, but for city evaluations. But it's very beneficial to the hunting fishing world too.

  Katie

  Well that's like the path that you mentioned, you know if you just you told me in a user manual that you can draw a line and then fly it I'd be like well I I'd rather scroll myself.

  Mark

  Why would you do that?

  Katie

  Yeah, like I don't want to fly over. I want to scroll and have control of where I am. But when you put it in the context of being a certain elevation over the river you want to look at and getting a quick picture without having to scroll and lose your spot because Google Maps or Google Earth just flew in a different direction like it tends to do. Yeah, it's more useful to put it in the context of what you want to use it for versus just giving a technical explanation of you draw a line and then you're going to fly along that line. Like that doesn't mean anything to me.

  Mark

  That's right.

  Katie

  So why don't you just finish up by plugging your course? I know you've mentioned it, but I definitely want you to kind of explain what your course is. I know some people might not be into hunting, but even if they're not, I'm sure it'd be useful for fishing. And there's probably a lot of hunters out there that could use it. So feel free to plug away.

  Mark

  Well, let's start with my main website is treelinepursuits.com and treelinepursuits on Instagram and treelinepursuits on Facebook. and I think you'll probably put a link in the show notes.

  Katie

  Yeah, for sure.

  Mark

  But the treeline pursuits, if you just want to remember one, you know, I do have this course, but I do have a lot of other things on my website. I write a lot of articles and I write for several websites. And so all of my articles are linked there and I do quite a bit of dehydrated food stuff. I spent so much time in the back country, Katie, that I couldn't eat Mountain House for the rest of my life. It just was not going to work out. So I took it upon myself years ago to really dig deep into dehydrating. So I have a lot of YouTube videos and articles on the gear and bags and how to do it, to take your own wheels in the back country. So not only did I have this e-scouting course, but I'm really into the dehydrating and making my own food. I've got a lot of Lama, pack Lama resources on my website as well. Uh, and then there's a link to the course and the course is that Treelineacademy.net. And again, it's in the introductory launch period right now. So for the month of May, if you use the code launch, that will get you $40 off. So it's only $79, it can get you two years of access. But you know, the fishermen out there, I mean, there's four master series in this course that teach the Google Earth, all the things we went over and more On X, Gaia GPS, and Base Map, just those alone are probably worth the course value. Just for -- and then not to mention the markup. We talked about organizing your markups and your data in Google Earth. We cover all of that. Obviously, a lot of hunting stuff as well. But there's a lot of stuff that could be of interest to  for those that are interested in that. But I am considering doing a second course when I get this one finished, which will be diving into dehydrated meals on a little more high-end basis. So that's kind of my next thing that I'm planning down the road, maybe for the winter time when I'm sitting around with snow up to our neck up here in Montana. So anyway, that's kind of what I got going. So follow me on Instagram and I've got a YouTube page as well and they're all at Treeline Pursuits.

  Katie

  All right, well, Mark, I can't thank you enough for coming on a talk. I've gotten so many nuggets from this. I can't wait to hop off and get on all these programs and try all these things out. So, um, I really can't thank you enough for, for sharing all this. I know that you probably give it away a lot of the secrets that you share in your course, but, um, it sounds like it's well worth the money you said for two years.

  Mark

  Um, I know that. I can't believe I gave out my bear snow tip. That's the first time I've ever given that out.

  Katie

  Now no one's going to sign up for the course. You've given away.

  Mark

  That's not even actually in the course because it's an elk hunting course. But so I'll send you the link and I hope you enjoy it. But again, I really appreciate it. Any feedback, don't hold back, good or bad, I can take it. And so I'll email you the code that you can use and it'll get you access and you can let me know what you think.

  Katie

  All right, sounds great. Well, thanks again, Mark. And I know we can have a couple minutes of chatting once we hop off here, but once again, just thanks so much for coming on to chat.

  Mark

  Thank you, Kate.

  Katie

  All right, and that is all. As always, if you liked what you heard, I'd love for you to go over to Apple Podcasts or wherever else you listen to podcasts and subscribe there. If you've got a couple extra minutes, a rating or review would also be much appreciated. Doesn't take too long, and it makes a big difference on my end. You can also find all my episodes on fishuntamed.com in addition to fly fishing articles every two weeks. And you can find me on social media under my name Katie Burgert on GoWild or @fishuntamed on Instagram. And I will see you all back here in two weeks. Bye everyone!

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