Bonnaroo 2010 – photo by John Patrick Gatta
JPG: How did it go from being a hobby to a job?
MM: It kind of revealed itself. There was a point that I realized that I loved it so much that I should step up my game. I just wanted to get my captain’s license. I really wanted to be doing it all the time at every opportunity without knowing where it would go or anything like that.
JPG: To get your license was it a lot of study or…?
MM: Yeah, it was an entire winter. We came off the tour for La Cucaracha and we’d been out for like 18 months, not consecutively, but 18 solid months of a world tour. We had planned a really long break, and the whole time on tour I was thinking about fishing, thinking about what I was missing, reading the fishing forums back in New Jersey. I came back and I just dedicated myself to it. I need to be involved with something else.
It was cool. I liked the whole process of it. I went to the library every day with my charts, taught myself how to navigate with a compass and a ruler, all that. It was neat. I didn’t know where it was going to go. Sort of let it ride…
JPG: Were you doing the Brownie Troop Fishing Show before you started getting really serious about matters?
MM: I don’t remember at this point. The fishing show was already dead. Kind of folded that up. The way the whole thing started was I had a…I used to run the Ween website for, I don’t know I want to say like 15 years or something like that, from my house. We had sections of the page like tour dates, the gallery, mp3s, videos, whatever and then I had this little section, which was like my blog and I started putting fishing reports on it. This is how this whole thing came about and I started getting all these messages from Ween fans that were fishermen. Turned into my own little kind of fishing report page. I felt like I should kind of move this off the website. I was more into updating my fishing report than updating ticketing information on it. I couldn’t keep up with the one thing. So, I moved it to the other site and I started putting up video. Then, it became a TV show. I don’t know where the guide service came about. I can’t remember now. (slight laugh) A natural sort of progression of the whole thing.
JPG: Makes sense because you’re doing now kind of what you were doing with the show, bringing someone on a guided fishing tour.
MM: Yeah.
JPG: Now, the people who initially used Arcangel Sportfishing, were a lot of them Ween fans who just wanted to hang out with you and now you’re getting a combination of them and serious fishermen?
MM: Yeah, it has totally unfolded like that. It’s kind of neat now. It started off, obviously, as Ween fans traveling in — I still get a lot of them. I get a lot of repeat customers now and I get a lot of people that maybe fished with me, they were Ween fans and they brought their pictures of their fish or whatever and showed them to relatives.
It’s slowly started to branch out where it’s almost 50/50, where I’m getting calls from tackle shops, where I left business cards or repeat business or maybe you have three guys on the boat and one guy is really into it and he comes back with relatives or friends or even without him or just the friends. It’s all over the place, kind of exactly like Ween’s fans. Our fans are all over the place. We have old people, hippies, college age frat boys, stoner dudes, Brooklyn kind of jerk faces (laughs). It’s yet to completely reveal itself but it’s starting to be really diverse, now. I’ve had marine biologists on my boat. I had a guy that’s a fish buyer for all of the restaurants in New York city like the top-rated restaurants.
It’s kind of like looking off the stage into this crowd of Ween fans, like what my clientele is. All over the place.
JPG: From the description you’re giving me, it sounds like a band building its audience. Get a couple here, get a couple there. Then, they tell somebody and they come back with a couple more.
MM: Yeah, ‘cause I never had a job job in my lifetime, I mean not since Ween started to get legs or whatever. But this is a job, you know. It’s great for me. I love it! I get up 3:30, 4 o’clock in the morning. I go to the boat. Keeps me out of the bar for the most part.
To me watching it develop, it definitely has taken on a life of its own. It’s the only other thing in my life other than the band that I’ve ever hooked on with that kind of intensity and passion — a lot of love into it, a lot of work. I take it very seriously. I take a lot of pride into it. It’s neat watching it grow and I’m actually starting to make money at it, which is a little blessing.
JPG: Does it all happen out of Belmar, NJ or does that vary by client?
MM: The first year I did it was all on the river, which is what I know the best. Grew up on this river and I know every inch of it like the back of my hand. Started off by doing that, and then I moved to the ocean and this is way more compelling, the ocean fishing. There’s a lot more fish in play. There’s a lot bigger fish in play. Anything can happen. Yesterday we had a mayday call over the radio and I watched this boat go down on the jetty…but we see whales, tunas, sharks, porpoises. It’s way more compelling stuff. I focus more on that now. I do like two weeks of river fishing a year and the rest is all on the ocean now in Belmar.
I do a lot of striped bass fishing. That’s like my bread and butter. Striped bass…anything that’s out there, but really striped bass, bluefish, flounder, sea bass, cod, pollock, albacore bluefin tuna, yellowfin tuna.
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