Episode list

Dos Boat heads west to meet up with Oliver Ngy and Kevin Harlander in North Central Wisconsin. Oliver and Kevin are here for two things: big musky and delicious panfish. These targets represent opposite poles of the fishing spectrum: Musky (also known as muskellunge)

MeatEater's Ryan Callaghan and Miles Nolte travel to Minnesota to learn more about, and even try to catch, big mouth buffalo. The guys build a raised casting platform on Das Boat, using supplies scavenged from the trash heap behind a local hardware store. After that, they meet Alec Lackmann, the world's foremost expert on a fish that few people care about. Alec studies big mouth buffalo in the Detroit Lakes area and has discovered some fascinating facts about these fish: First, they live a long time. No one actually knows just how long, but the oldest specimen he's dated was 112. Second, in the Detroit Lakes, and probably other places as well, these fish have not consistently reproduced in over 80 years. Cal and Miles tag along with Alec to help release some buffalo that he was studying in a capture pen; he fills them in on why these are such cool fish; Miles tries-unsuccessfully-to catch one of these octogenarian fish in the lake; and then they sit down with some local bow fishers to share a conversation and some beer. From there, Cal and Miles head over to the Mississippi River to try their luck on a population of river buffalo that don't get hunted with bows and are successfully reproducing. They cap off the episode with a delicious meal of fried sucker balls.

For the finale of Das Boat Season 2, MeatEater Wild Foods Contributor Danielle Prewett and longtime fishing guide Frank Smethurst, head to Red Lake, Minnesota. Red Lake is one of the most celebrated walleye fisheries in the country. But we're not after walleye. We're after the one fish out here that no one seems to like: freshwater drum. The locals call them sheepshead, and curse them as a nuisance by-catch, useless fish that steal bait and waste time. The thing is, freshwater drum are related to red fish and black drum, two gulf coast saltwater species that just about everyone agrees are delicious. Are these fish really that bad, or is this a case of people just believing what they're told and not experimenting for themselves? Few are better prepared to investigate that question than Danielle Prewett, a Texan with lots of experience cooking redfish. Das Boat gets one final upgrade when Minnesota guide and artist Josh Desmit stops by and christens her with a bad ass new paint job. After getting bounced around on Red Lake and learning some of the finer points of worm fishing, Danielle and Frank put freshwater drum to the taste test and prove, once and for all, that these fish are damn good.