Transcript: PODCAST INTERVIEW: Luyen Chou of GotOne
Transcript
Intro:
[0:04] Hey folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of The Articulate Fly.
On this episode, I'm joined by Luyen Cho, the driving force behind the GotOne app.
Luyen shares his fly fishing journey, the genesis of GotOne, and how the app improves both the individual angler's experience and fisheries management.
I think you're really going to enjoy this one.
But before we get to the interview, just a couple of housekeeping items.
If you like the podcast, please tell a friend and please subscribe and leave us a rating and review in the podcatcher of your choice. It really helps us out.
And I'm excited to bring the business and consulting skills I've developed off of the water to the Articulate Fly community.
If you're in the industry and feel like you're leaving money on the table or the day-to-day grind of running your business is killing you, let me help you find a more profitable and enjoyable path in the sport.
Over to www.thearticulatefly.com, and let's start our conversation today. Now on to our interview.
Marvin:
[1:05] Well, Lu Yen, welcome to The Articulate Fly.
Luyen:
[1:09] Thank you so much. I'm excited to be here, Martin. I appreciate you having me.
Marvin:
[1:13] Yeah, I'm really looking forward to our conversation, and we have a tradition on The Articulate Fly. We like to ask all of our guests to share their earliest fishing memory.
Luyen:
[1:22] Wow, so you know I've been fishing since I was a really, really young kid, but I think my first memory really stuck with me throughout these years was my uncle, who was really the person who got me to fishing and ultimately into fly fishing.
He and his two sons were also big fishermen and and lived in Cold Spring Harbor up on the Long Island Sound and I was a city kid, didn't do much fishing.
Whenever I'd go visit them, you know, they would take me out fishing.
And my very first memory was, I must have been, I can't imagine when, like six years old at the time, they took me fishing for snapper fish in the summer in the Long Island Sound.
And I thought it was the absolute coolest thing in the world to be able to stay on the beach and catch these snapper bluefish one after another with a little pop-in rig.
And so I caught a bunch of them, and they were putting them in this bucket on the beach.
[2:30] And I'd keep coming back to the bucket and think, wow, I thought we caught more fish.
I thought we put like 10 of those in there, just one. And the last time I came back to the bucket, I realized there were no fish left, and I realized there's a seagull sitting right on the edge of the bucket, eating the last of the snapper bluefin.
We had done an incredible job of feeding the seagulls.
Kings ran snapper bluefish and we had nothing to take home.
And that was a moment where I was consumed with outsmarting not only the fish, but every form of wildlife in terms of catching more fish than anyone else or anything else out there.
Marvin:
[3:13] Yeah, it's funny. Seagulls are, uh, they're kind of like the, uh, the rats of the beach, right? Exactly. Exactly.
Luyen:
[3:22] So... Avengers to the end.
Marvin:
[3:25] Yeah, exactly. And so Lou, when did you officially come to the dark side of fly fishing?
Luyen:
[3:33] Uh, so I guess it was when I was, again, young, must've been 10 or 11.
My uncle bought me a flight kit and I found the box, it was a little cardboard green box and it had all sorts of cheap materials in it and they're very cheap.
And I was fascinated by the idea of flies, but I didn't have a flyer, I didn't know what to do with them.
Once I made them, these crazy feathered concoctions, I was making time and, you know, I kind of learned how to, with a bobber that would be enough weight that I could throw it, you know, on a spinning.
And then it was around sixth grade, or no, I guess it was later than that, it was seventh or eighth grade, I met a kid who was into fly fishing, had a bunch of trout gear, and had decided to give up fly fishing altogether because he had become a, at that time we didn't call it that, but he'd become a vegan.
And it was very political about not harming fish in any way.
And so he sold me this fly fishing gear for 25 bucks, something like that.
[5:00] And it included a bat and kill, an old bat and kill reel, one of the very early bat and kill reels.
And I ended up buying a Fenwick Glass 8-foot fly bait.
[5:17] And that was when I sort of married this fly thing with actually being able to start to learn how to fly catch.
And then it just became an absolute obsession ever since then.
It was basically eighth grade and then I think really in college I became very serious about it.
But it started with that fly tying box I got from my uncle that seemed like this mech Pandora's box when I was probably like, you know, eight or nine or ten years old.
Marvin:
[5:51] Yeah, very, very neat. And so, you know, who are some of the folks that have mentored you on your fly fishing journey and what they teach you?
Luyen:
[5:59] You know, my uncle, David, who was an early pioneer and himself in saltwater fly fishing.
His sons taught me a lot. I caught my first trout on the Deschutes River with them, all of maybe five, six inches, but I thought I'd died and gone to heaven.
There was a buddy of mine, Thorne Sparkman, who started way back in the day, really the First.
Website, discussion forum for saltwater fishermen called Realtime.com.
Many of us who are very serious about saltwater fly fishing kind of met for the first time on Realtime.
And Thorne and I went to college together, and flew a lot together.
And I learned a ton from him. We traveled over the country fly fishing together.
Certainly reading all the books and being inspired by D. Cray and Flip Pallet and guys like Lou Tabury and many others. That was a huge influence in my life.
There was a fellow who sadly passed away a couple years ago named Ralph Burtis who was a long time fisherman.
[7:22] Very few people fly fish or really even light tackle fish in a serious way for striped bass.
York City Harbor and Jamaica Bay and in all of the incredibly, incredibly fertile, fecund waters right under the shadows of the New York skyline.
And Ralph had fished those waters for many decades. He learned how to do it from his dad. And he and I became fast friends in the early 90s, and I fished them all the time.
I learned everything about the backwaters of Jamaica Bay and bite from him.
[8:02] And then, you know, became very close friends with a lot of guys and folks who became guides. Ralph became a guide.
Folks like John McMurray and Brendan McCarthy and David Blinken and many folks who were fishing in New York City waters, Jim Levison and so on.
So, learned a lot from all of them, and yes, I've always had people around me who were incredibly generous with their time, with their expertise and experience and knowledge, and I always just soaked everything up that they provide to me, but I think if there was one real mentor in saltwater fly fishing in the New York area was this fellow named Ralph Burtis, who I think very fondly of.
Very sad that he passed away a couple years ago, but he was a real mentor to me.
Marvin:
[9:03] Yeah, it's amazing. I always tell people, I think flyinglers are some of the most generous people you ever meet on the planet.
Luyen:
[9:12] I think that's true, and I try to live up to that maxim and that standard.
I really believe in giving back the knowledge and moving it forward.
I take more satisfaction today in teaching people to fly fish and fly a tie and just appreciate our free...
I almost get more pleasure in that today than I do in catching fish myself. Yeah.
Marvin:
[9:44] It's kind of funny because people always ask me why I don't take more pictures.
And, uh, I was like, and I always tell them, I said, well, you know, my family has plenty of pictures of me with fish.
Um, and so that's now really just for me. And when I can't remember anymore, it doesn't matter. So.
Luyen:
[10:01] I think that's a good, that's a good perspective on things.
And when I probably can learn something from, because I still post too many pictures of myself holding fish on Instagram.
Marvin:
[10:13] Well, don't give me too much credit. It's really because I don't want to put my phone in the drink. I get that.
Luyen:
[10:17] I've done that before, many times.
Marvin:
[10:24] Yeah, and so you know it sounds like you probably kind of have a salt bias to your angling. Do you have a favorite species you like to chase on the fly?
Luyen:
[10:36] It's a great question. I mean, and to be totally fair and honest, I mean, I still hold trout in incredibly high regard.
They are probably still at the top of my totem pole from a target species standpoint.
You know, when we play that game that we all have, okay, you know, you could only fish for one species for the rest of your life, what would it be?
Trout is generally way up up high on that list.
Said, I think in terms of saltwater species, I probably.
[11:16] From having pursued them and, you know, have caught so many of them, but at the same time also having been punished by them many times.
And you and I talked before this fall about some of my futility today chasing them.
Stratas are a really important species to me and one that I have a a deep emotional connection with and spiritual connection with.
And so I'd say striped bass is high up on that list too.
I really have, in recent years, also spent a lot of time fishing for bonefish and tarpon.
And I caught my first ever this winter.
And so those species are very near and dear to me too.
So it's hard to answer with just one, but I think for salt, striped bass still are the most meaningful to me and I have the most kind of personal connection with, and then trout for freshwater.
Marvin:
[12:28] Got it, and you know, it's interesting because I've mentioned to you in our earlier conversations that I would love to be saltier, I'm just not, and it's just a function of kind of time and location, but I know that there are a lot of conservation issues impacting East Coast fisheries, and can you kind of speak to some of those for our listeners?
Luyen:
[12:52] Yeah, I think obviously lots of issues with trout are in many respects better known, and I think there's been, While trout are certainly under duress in many of our freshwater fisheries, I think some great work that's been done to conserve that fishery and those fish, and a lot of public awareness.
I think with saltwater, it is.
Both more complex and we know less. I think the science is not as good because it is more complicated.
If you think about striped bass, for instance, when I, growing up, I grew up up as a fisherman in the 80s, late 70s, when we were in the middle of really a cataclysmic collapse in striped bass stocks and the beginning of the moratorium on striped bass fishing and harvest.
[14:15] I have vivid memories of catching one striped bass in a year and thinking that I had absolutely cracked the code, that that was just an unbelievable achievement to catch one schoolie striped bass in a season.
Fast forward many decades, and I think we've seen both the benefits and reaped the rewards of very strict management during the moratorium.
[14:49] And we now catch many more striped bass than I thought we would ever be able to catch back in those early dark days.
But with that has come some complacency and people have short memories.
They forget how scarce striped bass were.
[15:10] And I really believe that we're seeing, sort of a second decline in striped bass stocks and populations.
You talk to guides who fished for the last several decades, for instance, out on the east end of Long Island, which is sort of my home waters now, around Montauk and Garner's Bay, back into the Peconics, the south side of Long Island, the Sound.
I mean, every single experienced guide or long-term recreational angler will tell you that the trend is very, very steeply down in terms of numbers of fish.
There are pockets of local abundance. There are areas like Raritan Bay where we've seen large numbers of large fish in recent years.
But overall, I think most people who really are out there on a consistent basis over the last many, many years are concerned about the decline in the number of striped bass and the quality of the striped bass fishery overall.
[16:30] And there are many factors that are leading to that. And that's part of what makes it complicated, unlike a trout stream where We've got a stream that's running maybe out of a reservoir.
It resides in a very small jurisdiction.
Bass are highly migratory fish that, that, that, that.
Travel across many, many states along a complex coastline that has both local state jurisdiction, but also travel into federal waters and maybe even into international waters.
And so even the management jurisdiction and the policy that sort of follow those jurisdictions are very complex and varied.
[17:22] We like to say striped bass don't wear license plates, right?
They're not from a state. They cross state boundaries.
When we have conservation equivalency in different regulations across different state lines, let alone once we get to federal waters and so on, it becomes very complicated.
Then they're also subject to changes in water conditions and climate in forage fish, bait fish.
They're subject and very sensitive to the quality of the water that may have to do with coastal conditions, runoff, local conditions, and it makes it very, very challenging.
But I think that overall, we are seeing a decline in striped bass stocks in the condition of the fishery that is very worrisome.
And that's resulted in some of the emergency measures that were put in place this season by the Atlantic Space Marine Fisheries Commission.
And I think the other problem is the data that we have about these fish and our fisheries is very, very poor. and we make.
[18:44] Incredibly momentous decisions about fisheries, you know, in terms of harvest regulations, seasons, closures that are informed by a very, very poor set of insights and a very meager amount of data.
And that is really problematic and worrisome because we're not seeing the kind of abundance of fish that we should be seeing if we had access to high-quality data and management policies that were really informed by high-quality data.
And that's, I'm talking at striped bass, but you can copy and paste that across many of the coastal species and game fish species that we pursue as inshore and offshore anglers.
Marvin:
[19:47] Yeah, plus I would imagine people probably haven't commercially fished for trout in a hundred years, right?
In the sense of having someone go out and catch them and take them to a hotel or a restaurant and say, here are the trout that I caught today.
So I would imagine that makes it pretty difficult because I mean, I think about striped bass, I think about Redfish, that's another kind of consumption and constituency that impacts those issues.
Luyen:
[20:13] Yeah, and there's a lot of debate and discussion about the commercial wreck kind of contribution to the problem.
One of the eye-opening things for me, as I've learned more about sort of the conservation angle of all of this is that, And this was not music to my ears as I started to sort of really appreciate this, but recreational anglers have a disproportionate amount of contribution to mortality and to the problem around fish stocks.
And again, as a wreck angler, it pains me to say that.
[20:52] Commercial fishermen are actually quite tightly managed and regulated.
We have much better data in many respects about commercial contribution to fish stocks than we do about recreational contributions to fish stocks.
For instance, with striped bass, by most estimations, recreational anglers contribute the vast majority to the unintended mortality of striped bass.
If you take a species like redfish, most commercial fishing for redfish in most states has been shut down for the last many, many years.
Any decline in redfish stocks is more probably a result of recreational angling and other factors than it is of commercial harvest.
Not to say commercial fishermen don't have responsibility, and there are well-documented instances, you know, with striped bass, let alone other species of poor behavior and malfeasance from the commercial community.
And that's a real problem. And I see that firsthand living out on the east end of Long Island.
But wreck anglers have to be aware, and I'm saying this as a wreck angler, that we can contribute enormously to the problem as well.
[22:08] And, you know, people think of wreck anglers as, you know, like folks on this, you know, on this podcast in your community will think of wreck anglers as a guy with a fly rod who's got a single hook on a fly and there's catch and release.
That's actually not the majority of the wreck angling population.
There are many more anglers who are on a beach with four rods out with chunks of menhaden knot them and don't even know that they've hooked up a striped bass until they decide to go home and the fish has been hooked for 30, 40 minutes.
Or guys who are going out on party boats, and again, this is not to criticize the party boats, but it's just much harder to manage for high quality catch and release outcomes those conditions than you can with a guy on a skiff with a fly rod who may catch and release five stripe bass with a single hook that's often barbless.
Just a different scenario. So even within wreck angling, there's a lot of variability in terms of what we're talking about. This is not to.
Cast blame in one direction or another. It's just to say wreck anglers are a big part of the problem and I think potentially part of the solution, which is why we built Gotland in the first place.
Marvin:
[23:33] Yeah, it's interesting too because I would say even catch and release trout anglers can be part of the problem.
I've been part of those conversations where even if you have relatively low mortality percentages, this just immense increase in and angling pressure can have significant impacts on trout populations.
Luyen:
[23:56] Yeah, that's right. And I think that's right. And I think we just have to be conscious of that, right?
No one has, no wreck angler has zero impact on the fishery, even if you're a catch and release angler. There is an impact and we have to figure out how we minimize that impact.
But we all have something, we have some responsibility for these fish and for maintaining these fish stocks.
Marvin:
[24:28] Yeah, absolutely. And to kind of back up a little bit back to the striped bass.
So it sounds like from a data perspective, you have kind of two problems.
You don't have enough data points and then you also have data quality issues, right?
Mm-hmm. Yeah. And so I know, I think the first time we spoke setting up this interview, Lou, we talked about the fact that you thought that citizen science could help solve that problem. Yeah.
Luyen:
[24:58] So I really think, you know, I'm a data guy.
And I come out of the consumer data technology space. at actually the education data space specifically.
And, you know, I believe there's absolutely a role for, highly scientific, highly validated data gathering to inform science.
You know, small number of data points, but highly validated.
But I think there's also a role for large datasets that have perhaps a lower level of overall accuracy, but because of the amount of data provides a more statistical level of accuracy over time. over time.
[25:55] So, you know, an example would be if you're an online retailer like Amazon.
You don't survey a hundred of your customers to find out what they're buying, how the website's working, what their tastes are, what you could stock more of, what you're stocking too much of.
You take the data, the purchasing data and the browsing data from the millions of customers that come to your website, and you run a regression line through that and you analyze that.
Some of those data points are going to be inaccurate because they're going to come from bots or people who don't know how to operate the website or visiting, don't really have an intention to actually purchase anything.
But if you have enough of that data and you run a regression line through it, you have a really good sense of what your customer's intent is, what the behavior is, where your products and services are meeting their needs, where you're missing the need.
[27:11] And I'm a big believer in that big data. And so if you bring it into the fisheries world, a lot of the traditional data collection around recreational angling and the fish that we fish for in saltwaters comes from dockside interviews, intercept surveys, phone surveys.
[27:45] As an example, I think the last time I participated in one of the surveys, I think I got a call on the phone from our local DC, was probably like seven years ago.
You're not collecting a lot of data because as many days as I fish out on the water, if the last time I was asked how many fish I caught was seven years ago, you can do the math and you're not mine to figure out that there aren't a lot of data points here.
And then, you know, when I was asked that, I mean, I've asked questions about fish that I caught over the last, you know, three months.
And I mean, I'll be the first to admit that my memory is not very good.
And if I got someone on the other end of the line, I'm busy and I want to provide that data because I believe in the science and I want to contribute to fisheries management, but I'm busy, and I'll give the best answer I can, but frankly, there's a recall bias issue here.
[28:49] And that is the traditional way that we collect data on recreational angling.
It's an imperfect science at best, and it's based on a very small number of data points.
And again, I say this without trying to in any way cast aspersions or criticize the hard work that fishery scientists and managers do. It's just, it's hard. It's very hard to get accurate data.
I do think there is an.
[29:27] Opportunity to ask recreational anglers to collect data in real time that benefits them, makes their angling experience better, helps them be better anglers, makes it a better experience. And I think that's what we're trying to do.
Just a regular habit like washing down your boat or washing your equipment or unrigging your rod to log your catch data.
It gives you much more insight into your own fishing.
If we can aggregate that data and provide it as a big data source to fisheries managers and scientists, it doesn't replace things like surveys and dockside intercepts and things like that, but it can supplement it and provide a way to triangulate to understand what's going on with our fish and our fisheries better than we can using traditional methodologies.
Marvin:
[30:30] Yeah, and I would say, too, it probably could really help kind of figure out some of the selection bias that's in those data sets, right?
Like who answers the telephone, right? Like all that stuff. Are you honest?
Forget about being forgetful, right?
Luyen:
[30:45] Yeah, and absolutely.
And I think we can learn a lot from how consumer technologies collect data data to streamline the process, make it as easy as possible, seamless as possible, and deliver value back to anglers in exchange for their contributing that data and that information.
I think those are lessons we've learned from consumer technology that really apply in this world of fisheries management and fisheries science, I really do believe it's the future for data gathering for these sorts of efforts in general.
I just think it's the right way to do it, and it's proven in other sectors and other fields.
And I think it will help us to be much, much more insightful about our fisheries and help us manage it much better than we can today.
Marvin:
[31:59] Yeah, I mean, it's great. It's kind of like, you know, it's bringing a 21st century tool to a 21st century problem instead of using a 20th century tool for a 21st century problem.
Luyen:
[32:10] Yeah, that's right. And you know, these fisheries are dynamic.
Changing really fast and we need more nimbleness, more agility, and more data to be able to respond more effectively to the changes in our fishing environment.
Marvin:
[32:28] And so this and kind of your prior education technology experience kind of led you to develop the GotOne app and you want to tell folks a little bit more about kind of of the genesis and the creation of the app.
Luyen:
[32:40] Yeah, sure. So interestingly, I developed GOT1, or the whole idea for GOT1 started before I even thought about its application to this whole arena of fisheries management and conservation.
I just was frustrated as a fisherman who was also a very data-driven person that keeping a reliable log on my fishing was so challenging to do.
It's interesting. I was talking to my buddy, Peter Jenkins, who runs the Saltwater Edge, one of the great sort of online and physical fishing tackle stores for saltwater anglers based in Rhode Island and he said to me that he does a podcast and a bunch of videos and talks to fishermen all over the country and one of the questions he always asks these expert anglers is, what are three things that you would provide as advice to any other angler if they want to get better at what they do?
He said, you know, almost universally, One of the three answers is keep a fishing log.
[34:00] And as a fisherman, I kept a fishing log for decades because I realized that my memory of my fishing experiences, my catches was faulty.
And there were a lot of data elements that I wanted to capture.
I wanted to know like, hey, what time of year did I catch the most striped bass?
And what time was I catching them on? What moon phases? What was the water temperature?
Where did I catch these fish?
[34:35] And so for many, many years, like most experienced and obsessed anglers, you know, I would keep a journal.
Back in the day it was on stenographic pads and I would somehow transfer that into Microsoft Word and eventually into Excel.
But it's just very, very difficult to maintain those logs.
Logs. Half the time you're up to your navel in salt water, in waders and boots, and the last thing you want to do is try to scribble something on a piece of paper, or you're on a boat and you're helping someone land a fish, or you're trying to steer the boat away from trouble or go chase after another pod of albacore, false albacore somewhere 100 yards away.
It's It's just very hard to maintain accurate records on paper.
And so, you know, many years ago, I thought, well, this is ridiculous.
Why aren't we just doing this with your, you know, smartphone?
[35:43] The smartphone is always in your hand.
You should be able to record a catch with a couple of taps. And the beauty is the smartphone knows where you are, what time it is, what day it is.
Through the magic of the Internet, it can figure out what the moon phase is, the tide, the water temperature, air temperature, all those environmental data points that are so important.
It can store it in the Cloud and it can graph it, and it can aggregate it in interesting ways.
I kept waiting for someone to build that app. Because I didn't want to build the app myself. I just thought, that's a waste of time. Someone's going to build this thing and I can just pay for it.
And no one ever built the app. Um, there, there are phishing apps out there.
They're even apps that are, you know, call themselves fish logging apps.
[36:39] You know, almost every single one is more about either being like Facebook for fishermen, it's a social network to share your brag photos, or it's about sort of logging the location of your, you know, the track of your trip, which, you know, I and a lot of guys and other fishermen kind of think of as as a spot burning app, which is not what I wanted to do, right?
Fishermen are very private about where they fish, you know, we really want an app.
I want a map that really is just recording the details of the catch and then aggregating it so I have the insights to understand what leads to, you know, better fishing, what conditions lead to my catching more striped bass or false albacore or bonito or whatever it is.
[37:32] And so finally, I ended up about three years ago, building a prototype of this app for myself.
It was not sort of commercially scalable or available. It was really kind of just a bare bones jalopy of an app I built for myself.
And in two seasons, I learned more about what drove fishing success for me than I had in probably 40 years of fishing.
[38:00] All these questions I had, is the fishing really better the three days after the full moon or the three days before the new moon or you know, are our striped bass really more active at 65 degree water temperature or 55 degree water temperature?
It answered all those questions after using that, you know, prototype app for like two seasons.
And so a year ago, I thought, you know, I got to just build this thing and make it available to anglers because it's just too good, you know, not to share.
And so that's what led to GotOne. And it was really a family affair.
My daughter, who's an incredible designer and artist designed the logo for the app.
Her roommate is an incredible illustrator, drew all the icons for the individual fish.
My son, who's a data analytics and business major at Emory University, helped me with the coding and the data analytics.
And then, you know, folks from the fishing community who heard about this app got excited about it. And so Tony Friedrich from the American Saltwater Guides Association, you know.
[39:22] You know, sat down with me, looked at the app, and said, hey, have you thought about providing this data on an aggregate basis, anonymized, with the location data generalized to multi-mile increments, to fishery scientists and fishery managers?
They find it incredibly useful.
[39:44] And a fellow named Tom Feuda, who's an obsessed saltwater angler like me out of Connecticut, he just retired from his long career as a software developer.
He'd heard about the app and he said, hey, can I get involved in helping you build this thing? And he's been just an unbelievable partner on the technical side of things.
And it just kind of took off as a mini movement among people who, like me, saw the power of data and modern mobile applications and software and AI to make phishing more data-driven and informed and more insightful and more fun.
And again, Tony from ASGA was really the one who unlocked this idea for me of, wow, if we could share this data in an aggregated way that didn't burn angler spots, but really provided a citizen science angle that would allow fisheries managers and scientists to have way more data than they have ever had before about recreational angling and recreational fishing, wouldn't that be an incredible added value.
And that's how this all came together.
Marvin:
[41:06] Yeah, and it's amazing, you know, listening to you talk about it, I'm sitting there thinking, you know, the data that you're effectively pulling, you know, basically from the internet, right, for tides and all that stuff, is way more accurate than any kind of written down analog journal or what you read on the chalkboard in the marina too. you're actually getting better data.
Luyen:
[41:25] Yeah, yeah. So we are pulling data from NOAA buoys, from satellites, from weather stations.
Actual buoy is. Or you happen to be in a weird tidal pool where the current works differently than wherever the tidal station is. So we give you the ability to multiply that.
But the starting point is way more accurate than most anglers' observation is going to be in the heat of the moment as to what's going on where they caught the fish. Yeah.
Marvin:
[42:23] And you've made it incredibly easy to use, right? I mean, I look at it like you can input data by voice, you know, you've got a palette of fish, you kind of do it, you know, it's literally a couple taps and you've recorded your data point, right? Yeah.
Luyen:
[42:37] And that's kind of where my, you know, background in developing commercial and consumer software came from is, you know, I've always been relentlessly focused on usability and user experience and how do you make this, how do you make any software experience something that is is so simple that you almost.
Are embarrassed not to use it. So a lot of these apps, to log a catch, it's like 25 pages of data, and no one's ever going to do that.
You might as well take it on a stenographic notepad.
So, GotOne, you literally can log a catch with three taps or with your voice.
And we're about to add a feature that allows you to actually record a catch just with the photo of the fish, Because most recreational anglers, what do they do when they catch a fish?
They take a picture of it, right? The picture is aware of the time, the date, and the location of that catch.
We can now use that, actually, to create the log entry.
So, you know, I really am taking all of my knowledge about consumer software to try to build something that is as streamlined and simple and as easy to get the data in as possible.
And, you know, that's kind of the world I come from. I'm actually surprised most apps are as cumbersome to use as they are.
And I think that's a, you know, a huge advantage that got one has over other apps in the market right now.
Marvin:
[44:06] And the great thing too is, you know, you know, not just it fixes the faulty memory and gives you better data and, you know, helps you kind of, you know, fishermen are also superstitious, right?
So you kind of have to cut through that. But the other thing like I noticed reading your newsletter, for example, you know, a hummingbird tells you a lot about what's underneath the water, but to be able to get kind of that like Google map overlay of the of the terrain is incredibly helpful to be able to see channels and points and things like that as well.
Luyen:
[44:35] Yeah, yeah.
So, you know, we're able to leverage the incredible advances in technology that are now publicly available, right?
So, we are, you know, when we started with GOT1, when you log the catch, it was using sort of a very generic map.
We now use the satellite maps that we sourced from Google, and it's very precise and it's incredibly, incredibly useful because the level of precision allows you to zoom in and see not only like, oh, I was in this general vicinity, but, oh, you know, the last 10 fish I caught when I came to this spot, regardless of tide, were sitting on this long little edge of the channel.
Or maybe they're on that edge of a channel on the incoming, and they're on the other side of it on the outgoing.
[45:35] You can see that now in all the data. It's not like you're saying, I think they're sitting on this side of the channel on this side.
It's like I can actually go and zoom in, validate that that's actually what's happening.
We do some really cool tricks with the technology where GPS location data can be a little funky, and not always 100 percent accurate.
So we actually take multiple samples and we kind of triangulate on position.
If you don't have a cell connection, which is a problem a lot of times, we fish in places where there's spotty, you know, cell connections and internet connections, it's able to, you know, get that location data off the phone GPS without the internet connection.
And then it will sync the data to the Cloud once it actually gets a connection.
So a lot of tricks to make it feel very, very seamless and almost magical when you use it, and very resilient, just regardless of your connectivity, your location, what's going on with your phone at that specific moment.
[46:48] And it's taken a lot of work, but we've gotten it to the point where its ability to pinpoint your location and spot it on a satellite map that shows you all the feature details of the water you're fishing is really quite precise.
Marvin:
[47:05] Yeah, and you know, before we talk a little bit more about some of the folks that you've partnered with to kind of share the aggregated data, let's talk a little bit more about, you know, how privacy is baked in and how anglers can feel comfortable that, you know, if they use the app and share their data, they're not gonna come back in three months and find 20 boats sitting on their spot.
Luyen:
[47:25] Yeah, so that was a really important issue for us.
And one of the reasons that I didn't use a lot of the other phishing apps out there, I primarily want an app that allows me to log my catches and provides insights to one person, me. Makes me a better angler.
[47:52] And so that privacy was very, very important and we don't make this a social network.
You're not having to opt out in order to not share your latest catch and the location of that catch with every other user who got one.
In fact, right now, you can't even share that data with other users who got one, but we will add the ability to create a network of friends that you want to share with over time, but that's really not where we started.
That's not the main purpose of the app.
In terms of the aggregation of the data and the sharing it with fisheries scientists and managers and conservation organizations, we talked to scientists and fisheries managers and we said like, How precise do you actually need this data to be?
Like, can we give it to you anonymized?
Can we give you the location data generalized to a multi-miles, let's call it 10 to 15 mile increment.
And the answer to our surprise was overwhelmingly, yes, we don't need to know unless we have a specific program and we ask anglers permission, we don't need to know the exact identity of the angler.
[49:19] And frankly, as long as we know generally what state the data is coming from, we're in good shape.
Now, there are exceptions to that, right, where there may be complex sort of jurisdictions and regulatory distinctions within a, you know, a particular area.
[49:42] Like, you take the Chesapeake Bay, there may be different regulations at the base of a particular river or estuary than at a the mouth or whatever.
But overall, they don't really, I mean, they're not getting that precise data from the data that they're collecting through intercepts and dockside surveys anyway, right?
So almost universally, when we talked to scientists and managers, they said, if you give us that data in that 10 to 15 mile increment, that's phenomenal.
That's better than we have. So then we turned around and we went to, you know, the top fishing guides in the country who, frankly, are the ones that are most worried about, you know, I know a lot of fishing guides who say, if you're using like, you know, this logging app, that logging app, that logging app, you know, not Navionics, you need to turn them off or you can't fish with me, right?
Because they don't want to have the precise location information from their trip broadcast and shared.
And so when we went to them and we said, hey, if we generalize the location data around the catch to a 10 to 15 15 mile increment, would you be comfortable with that?
And 100% of them said.
[50:54] Absolutely. In fact, for the most part, I don't fish in an area that's bigger than 15 miles anyway, so have at it.
They're more worried about protecting a particular 100-yard piece of shoreline along a mangrove bank or a little depression in a channel that's 50 yards across.
10, 15 miles might as well be completely locationless for them.
And so we found that sweet spot where the most discerning fishermen, which are the guides, and the scientists and fisheries managers were totally comfortable in terms of the level of generalization.
And that's how we that's how we approached it but you know we took the time to ask both of those communities what they wanted and what their fears were and what they were comfortable with and realized there was a sweet spot and and I think we were really the first app that's ever done that gone out and asked those communities what they're comfortable with.
Marvin:
[52:04] Yeah that's pretty neat and so you know I know you you've started to partner with conservation and management organizations you want to share with our listeners some of the folks that you're are collecting and sharing this aggregated data with.
Luyen:
[52:18] Yeah, sure. So, you know, for starters, we've had incredible support, funding support, and, you know, sort of input on design and on many of these issues from the Saltwater Guides Association, from the Nature Conservancy.
And then we are also getting support from commercial partners like Hatch Outdoors.
So Hatch makes hatch fly reels.
They have a very strong conservation focus.
[52:56] They've been super supportive of us as well. And then in terms of, you know, sort of state and federal and local agencies, we've had a lot of support and interest from the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, some folks from NOAA.
And then more specifically, we're supporting what I think is really a groundbreaking study. So this comes back to the whole, you know, conversation about striped bass, recreational mortality.
[53:27] But the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries is doing a multi-year study on the factors around striped bass catch and release and their relationship with striped bass mortality and health post-release.
So things like how long have fish been played, how long have they been held out of the water, temperature, the method of catch.
Are you catching them with bait? Are you using treble hooks?
Are over multiple hooks.
The level of where the fish is actually hooked, is it hooked in the mouth or the esophagus, the level of blood that's exhibited by the fish.
They have been doing this study using paper surveys from guides.
[54:20] This summer we introduced, got one as a way to provide that additional data to support the MassDMF survey, and we're super excited about that collaboration.
That's going to lead to some really valuable insights into, you know, how we can better handle striped bass under catch and release scenarios to make sure that they're healthy when they swim away.
And we're in discussions with a number of other state agencies that are doing similar studies species, with species like redfish, false albacore, bluefish.
[54:57] So with false albacore, the Saltwater Guides Association is doing a multi-year study around false albacore tagging to understand their actual range.
For many, many years, as long as I've fished for false albacore, there's been a raging debate about whether the fish that we catch in North Carolina or in Jupiter, Florida, are the same as the fish that we catch in Montauk, or for that matter in the Mediterranean.
The Albi tagging project, which was started last season, is the first time that false albicore have ever been tagged, and we actually have insights into all of that.
Now it turns out that Montauk fish appear in Jupiter, Florida and in North Carolina.
We're going to be working with the Saltwater Guides Association to use the GotOne app to extend that study so that we get way more data and we don't have to actually put a physical tag into every fish, which is potentially traumatic for the fish.
In order to gain the insights that we want to understand the range and the health and the vitality of false albacore, which are really, really highly sought after game fish for light tackle anglers.
Marvin:
[56:09] Yeah, absolutely. And we've kind of touched on this a couple of times, but can you share maybe like your forward feature pipeline, maybe the next 6 to 12 months, so people are kind of curious what to expect if they're users or if they're on the fence about whether they want to download and use the app?
Luyen:
[56:24] Yeah, sure. So, you know, the first big thing we're working on, and this is thanks to funding from Hatch and from Saltwater Guides Association, is photo and camera logging.
So the ability to log a fish, not just through voice or through taps, but through taking a picture of the fish that you catch with your camera on your phone, or the ability to upload photos.
So The cool thing is because we have all the environmental data going back three years, you can upload in the next version of GotOne, you'll actually be able to upload photos of fish you caught going back three seasons, and it will pull in all of the relevant environmental data based on the time and date of the cat and location of the catch from the photo.
And then it will actually store your photo in the cloud. So you can have not only your fish log with all of the catch data and the location on the map, but with the photo of the actual fish. So we're super excited about that.
[57:29] That photo logging over time is going to unlock a lot of really cool science fiction type features. So we're working on the ability to actually identify the species of the fish from a photo.
We are working on the ability to estimate length, girth, and ultimately weight of the fish through the photo.
We think over time, and this may be many months away still, but we'll actually be able to identify the individual fish uniquely itself.
So if you think about the false albacore tagging project, the tag, the spaghetti tag that's inserted into the back of the fish is what allows us to determine that a fish that was caught, tagged, swam away in Montauk is the same fish in Jupiter, Florida.
[58:24] Imagine taking the photo of the fish and got one in Montauk, and then catching it in Jupiter and taking a photo of it, allows us to establish that the same fish migrated from Montauk to Jupyter without actually having to put a physical tag in it, right?
We think we can actually, through AI and photo-based logging, over time replace the whole technology of the tag.
So that's kind of longer term but very exciting. We are building some really cool data visualizations that will allow anglers to understand the aggregate data and trends of their fishing and their fishing success and their fishing logs over time. So that's a big feature coming out.
You know, we're looking at being able to create and both online and print fishing almanacs.
So you know, your year of fishing and review based on all the data with the photographs of the fish that you caught.
[59:31] And we're also looking at the ability to add, and I mentioned this before, but to begin to add social groups or fishing buddies, or let's say you're a guiding outfitter, you want all your guides to be able to share data.
We're gonna start to allow that sharing of data with other anglers, but only if you select and elect to share that data with specific groups of people under specific circumstances.
So maybe you have a fishing trip and you want your five buddies and you to be able to share your fishing data will allow you to do that.
So those are some of the big features on the immediate roadmap.
Marvin:
[1:00:21] Got it, and I know maybe any expectation, I know you're saltwater only right now, you know, at some point maybe steelhead anglers trot anglers will be able to see.
Luyen:
[1:00:31] Yeah, thanks for asking about that. Yeah, so we've had some really interesting conversations about starting to add species in other saltwater and freshwater fisheries.
So we're talking about adding steelhead and salmon in the Pacific Northwest.
We've had some really interesting conversations about adding freshwater species and you know, and there's some different data requirements and data, you know, sort of availability for freshwater fish, but trout, bass, freshwater bass would be top of the list.
And then also, I think even more immediately on the list is adding, you know, more pelagic species like tuna.
Marvin:
[1:01:24] Yeah, very, very neat. And I know this next question, it's very, very broad, but I always – it's kind of – I don't know. I've been lucky to interview a handful of technology folks in the fly-fishing space, and I'm always kind of curious about kind of their views on technology.
We were talking this evening before we started recording that we're getting tons of press right now around tech, a lot around generative AI, and I was kind of curious kind of on your general thoughts on what kinds of problems kind of lend themselves to technology-driven solutions and kind of, you know, where do you see the boundaries where you just can't go there with tech?
Luyen:
[1:02:01] Yeah, I mean, I think that a lot of the new technology coming out, Gen AI technology, data analytics technology, mobile technology, will just allow us to to capture data way more seamlessly, way more easily, allow us to provide really powerful insights and analytics to anglers and to scientists.
You know, for anglers, I think it should make the sport more fun, right? It should just make it, you know, I'm a data-driven guy.
[1:02:43] You know, I geek out on this data. It just makes it so much more fun for me to know my theory about when I catch more fish or where I catch bigger fish or whatever it is is actually confirmed through the data.
The ability to do that with some of these new tools is going to really, really increase over the next few months and years.
I think also, the new generative AI tools will allow us to provide much more actionable insights to anglers about, okay, here's what the data tells you, but what does it mean in terms of, you know, what you should do?
When should you fish? When should you book your next guided trip?
What tackle should you be using under these circumstances?
You know, all that kind of stuff at being more prescriptive to anglers about what actually works, I think that's going to be really transformative.
[1:03:46] And I think the same thing at the policy level, at the science level, just providing way, way better understanding and insight into what's going on with our fisheries and our fish stocks and what sorts of policies are going help us to really maximize those fisheries and those fish species.
And then I think ultimately, you know, making sure that we do that in a way that protects people's privacy and respects the boundaries in terms of what they want to share is going to be really, really important.
I think that AI and technology can actually help us do that, as counterintuitive as that may sound.
If we develop those technologies with that mindset, we can actually use these new AI technologies to help us to protect privacy and user interests more effectively.
But you have to be really thoughtful and intentional about that, you know, when you design the software and make a commitment to your users that, you know, that's the first principle for what you're doing.
Marvin:
[1:05:09] Very, very neat. And, Luyan, before I let you go this evening, is there anything else you'd like to share Earth our listeners.
Luyen:
[1:05:16] No, I just, you know, I really want everyone to, I just love for people to download the app, .one, G-O-T-O-N-E, one word, on the App Store, the Apple App Store, and on Google Play Store.
And, you know, we really value everyone's input.
We've gotten some great, great emails and, and, you know, suggestions and recommendations and ideas from folks.
And, you know, we, we, We really thrive off of the reaction from the fishing community to what we've done.
We're here to provide a tool to folks that we want to have in the market.
And so we really, really thrive on feedback and input from fishermen.
Marvin:
[1:06:07] And we just want to make this something that is community-driven and that everyone loves use and and that's that's the main goal of what we're doing and I'll drop links to both of those stores in the show notes and I would imagine you probably got some social media channels and a website you'd like to share with folks too.
Luyen:
[1:06:28] Yeah so our website is is just gotoneapp.com one word G-O-T-O-N-E-A-P-P dot com on On Instagram, we've got one app.
We're on Facebook and Twitter, under the same handle, but we probably are going to spend more time on Instagram and on Facebook.
We're also on YouTube. So there are a number of videos that teach you how to use the app, talk about some of our partnerships.
So if you go to Got1App on YouTube, you can find all those videos as well.
But the website gotoneapp.com is a good place to start.
Marvin:
[1:07:12] Yeah, and I'll drop links to all that stuff in the show notes.
And Louie, I really appreciate you taking the time late after a very long, fruitless day of fishing to talk to me.
Luyen:
[1:07:22] It's my pleasure, Marvin. I really, really enjoyed this and excited for your listeners to engage with us and become part of our family.
Marvin:
[1:07:32] Well, hopefully you suffering through an interview with me this evening will improve your fishing karma tomorrow.
Luyen:
[1:07:39] Unfortunately, I think that's up to the fishing gods at this point.
I don't think any of us mere mortals can affect the outcome tomorrow.
Marvin:
[1:07:47] Well, best of luck on the water and take care.
Luyen:
[1:07:49] Thank you, Marvin.
Intro:
[1:07:52] Well, folks, I hope you enjoyed that as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you.
Again, if you like the podcast, please tell a friend and please subscribe and leave us a rating and review in the podcatcher of your choice.
Tight lines, everybody.