Eating "TOXIC" Trout! *Experiment Catch & Cook*

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]I'm paralyzed from the neck down.

[00:00:10]All right, all right.

[00:00:13]That little thing sounds like a freaking jackhammer. We're good.

[00:00:18]Bingo.

[00:00:20]That should stay.

[00:00:22]Yeah, I think so. Fingers crossed. In this episode, we're not just going to catch some fish, but we're going to find out if they're actually safe to eat. So, we are fishing currently on this trip in the Indian River Lagoon, which is located on the East Coast of Florida.

[00:00:39]We will be launching in this river area here.

[00:00:43]These sand flats are great for fishing to find flounder and spotted seatrout. I will be going out with my buddy Tyler, and we will be exploring this coastline.

[00:00:54]If you remember, a few months ago, we had a horrible red tide all in Florida, and there was hundreds of thousands of dead fish.

[00:01:04]Apparently, it is not safe to eat these fish. So, I'm going to do a few tests of my own to find out how safe it really is. I got something, dog.

[00:01:18]Yeah, buddy. I think I got myself dinner.

[00:01:22]What is that?

[00:01:25]Should I shark? Oh, a barracuda.

[00:01:28]It's a barracuda. Barracuda.

[00:01:31]Oh, a good size one, dude.

[00:01:33]Good shark, mate, huh? Yeah.

[00:01:37]Man.

[00:01:40]I don't know. I think they have to be a certain size to keep them, though.

[00:01:43]Yeah, we'll let him go. Did I was I was hoping that I thought he was a big seatrout at first. When I saw the little spots on the back of his tail, I was like, "Dinner, baby. The dinner dinner bell is ringing." All All he's he tired himself out.

[00:02:06]Please don't bite me, barracuda.

[00:02:25]Off he goes.

[00:02:28]I'd laugh if he'd come if he'd come over and bite your little toe. I'd be like, damn it, cuz I'm bleeding.

[00:02:33]He's like, "Ooh, more fish." And barracuda, they really they really uh I do not like touching them. Yeah, they're nasty.

[00:02:41]They have like this slime.

[00:02:44]Stinky slime. Stingray? 5-incher.

[00:02:48]Oh, I see him. Little He's looking at me, dog. Little stingray.

[00:02:53]I don't know if you'll be able to see him. He He's He's swimming. He's tiny.

[00:02:56]Oh, he's sitting. That's easily the smallest stingray I've ever seen. Should I grab him? No.

[00:03:02]>> [laughter] >> Mate, here, hold on, mate.

[00:03:07]This is what they tell you not to do.

[00:03:11]Oh, he swam away. Crikey. He doesn't want any of your shenanigans.

[00:03:16]Oh, you got your tail bit off. See that?

[00:03:20]Bit. Probably barracudas all out here.

[00:03:22]Tyler, there's another stingray.

[00:03:24]Another one? This one's a little bit bigger, though.

[00:03:28]I'm not going to I'm not going to try to touch this one. I'm going to just try to scare him off with my rod.

[00:03:34]And there he goes.

[00:03:37]I just remembered that my GoPro's waterproof. Oh, nice. I'm going to try to get a shot of the stingray.

[00:03:49]There's It's four or five stingrays around me right now. I feel like Steve Irwin right now.

[00:03:55]>> I'm I'm stingray shuffling like you wouldn't believe.

[00:03:58]Yo, that's what they taught us in school. In school in Florida, they teach you how to do the stingray shuffle before you can even walk. How's this rig work? Okay, so this is a sliding popping cork rig. So, I got a live mullet on the end, but I've got a free spooling bobber. Once it reaches my top double uni knot, it'll stop. So, that way I get all of my weight in the front when I'm casting. And once it hits the water, my mullet can swim away FROM THE BOBBER.

[00:04:18]OH, DANG. NOW IT STOPS RIGHT THERE.

[00:04:21]DUDE, that is professional. I like that.

[00:04:24]Gives you I always try to scar up my mullet a little bit, scrape some scales off, cut the tail a little bit just to separate them from the live healthy fish. I'm walking your mullet right now.

[00:04:33]You're like, "Come on. Come on, Noah.

[00:04:34]Don't bark at the neighbors." Yeah.

[00:04:37]No. No. Stay off the grass, puppy.

[00:04:40]>> [laughter] >> Oh! He's taking off for a second. Man, I got excited there.

[00:04:47]Look Look at all the scales >> All the All the scales are missing.

[00:04:50]Yeah. What is a Every single >> What did that? Snook? Snook or a ladyfish or a Dude, get him Look at freaking dude.

[00:04:58]You got one? Yeah, I'm on.

[00:05:01]Yeah, nice and easy. Nice and easy. I up.

[00:05:04]I'm giving him his sweet time. Yo, this is a good fish.

[00:05:10]This is a good fish.

[00:05:14]Dude, I think it's a trout. I think it's a trout.

[00:05:20]Yeah, nice and easy.

[00:05:24]I think it's a trout, man.

[00:05:27]He's coming right to you, actually.

[00:05:28]Okay. Okay.

[00:05:30]It is Oh, it's a good trout, dude. All right. All right. Nice and easy. Go.

[00:05:33]Nice and easy. Yeah, you're good. You're good.

[00:05:35]Hold on.

[00:05:36]Yeah. Yeah. You're good.

[00:05:39]All right. Hold on. I'm going to grab him. All right.

[00:05:41]All right. Hold on. I just want to let him get kind of cuz yeah, he sees me. He don't like it. Yeah. Yeah. Here, I'm going to ease him right to you.

[00:05:47]>> Yeah, keep pressure on him and reel.

[00:05:49]Oh!

[00:05:51]>> [laughter] >> Yes.

[00:05:56]GOOD TRY, KEV.

[00:05:59]>> [snorts] >> WOO! ON THE DOA KILL.

[00:06:01]Um here, you got him? Make sure you got his ass. Yeah, I got him. Now, you got him? Yes. Hey, it might have been a big trout that grabbed my mullet.

[00:06:10]The stoke is real. Go take his ass to THE COOLER, BRO.

[00:06:14]>> [laughter] >> YO, THAT'S WHAT IT'S ALL about right there.

[00:06:20]Yo.

[00:06:24]This is Yeah, like I came out here wanting this I was like, I want to see trout today.

[00:06:30]Beautiful looking sea trout, too.

[00:06:35]The stoke is so hard right now running through my veins.

[00:06:40]I'm so happy.

[00:06:42]I'm just going to rip his gills out.

[00:06:52]Oh my god, I almost lost him. No, I told you you better [ __ ] not, bro.

[00:06:57]No, he's good. I ripped his gills out.

[00:07:00]All right, good. But his hook came off and he blow >> [laughter] >> I almost lost him.

[00:07:06]I got him. Yeah, I'm good.

[00:07:10]What a beautiful fish.

[00:07:12]You can see the blood coming out of this vein here.

[00:07:23]It's how you bleed a fish.

[00:07:28]He's big. He's a big boy.

[00:07:31]This is the secret weapon right here that caught the spotted sea trout here in Vero Beach, Florida in the Indian River Lagoon.

[00:07:41]There was red tide here about a month or two ago real bad and seems like all the red tide is gone and things are getting pretty healthy but we're going to do some tests to really find out what's going on here.

[00:07:57]I don't want all my apple juices to get uh to get um all fishy.

[00:08:09]Ooh, yeah.

[00:08:11]Oh, you won, dog. You won.

[00:08:14]Yes.

[00:08:16]Oh!

[00:08:17]>> OH, IT'S A GOOD FISH, BRO. This is snook. It's snook.

[00:08:20]Is it a snook? Yeah, it's a snook.

[00:08:24]Yeah, it's a snook.

[00:08:25]Wicked. It might be a trout. You don't have a ruler on you, do you? I do not.

[00:08:31]Oh, it's a freaking trout. It's a trout.

[00:08:34]Holy smokes, dude.

[00:08:37]Yeah, get him in there. Get him in there.

[00:08:40]Holy! I got your rod.

[00:08:43]Yo! Oh!

[00:08:47][ __ ] We're in town city now, boys.

[00:08:51]Yo!

[00:08:53]That's a fatty. That's a fatty.

[00:08:55]All right, man.

[00:08:57]Boy!

[00:08:58]That's sick, dude.

[00:09:00]Yeah, that's That's a nice trout. I tell you they'll choke down a mullet, bro.

[00:09:05]And they want that splash. I'm about to switch my lure up and my rig up to where I I instead of doing it like this, I'm going to have to like splash it and [ __ ] Yeah.

[00:09:11]>> Right after I splashed it. Yeah. Right after I splashed it. Splash the uh the bobber, right? Yep. That bobber action.

[00:09:18]Dang, I learned something today.

[00:09:21]Yo! If that dolphin Oh, yeah, you got there the dolphin's right next to uh your your mullet. I think the dolphin's trying to eat those trout, huh?

[00:09:30]>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, they don't really want something small like my mullet. They want something big like that trout.

[00:09:35]Yeah, I think the dolphin sensed that trout stress and now they're all here looking for them. Everyone's trying to get dinner.

[00:09:43]>> [laughter] >> There's a stingray about 3 ft in front of me.

[00:09:53]There's so much bait and so much life.

[00:09:56]Look at Tyler go.

[00:09:59]Ooh, I got some big old rocks in there.

[00:10:08]I think the dolphin should be like right on Oh, I think they're right in front.

[00:10:12]Oh, there they go.

[00:10:15]Oh, I heard if you like slap your thing on the water it gets them all excited.

[00:10:21]Oh, I just got water all over my reel.

[00:10:23]Whoops.

[00:10:33]Ha, that was a good one.

[00:10:35]Wow, these houses are freaking beautiful.

[00:10:39]Ew.

[00:10:43]What a pretty day out here.

[00:10:47]I'm about to hit the mangroves.

[00:10:50]The wind pushes me pretty quick.

[00:10:52]You guys having any luck at all? Yes.

[00:10:56]Sweet.

[00:10:57]It's pretty amazing how many dolphin fish you get. Nice.

[00:11:01]Yeah.

[00:11:02]I like it. Beautiful.

[00:11:05]Beautiful.

[00:11:06]That's awesome.

[00:11:08]Woo.

[00:11:09]You guys live here? Yeah, I live I live in the other Castaway on right across the street. I know I know Lee Harden.

[00:11:16]Lee Harden?

[00:11:18]Did you go to Vero Beach High School?

[00:11:19]Yeah, I went to Sebastian but my brother Alex went to Vero. You might know Connor.

[00:11:24]Connor Ross? Oh, you know what? Connor Wheels, YEAH. WE WENT YOU?

[00:11:33]>> [laughter] >> WE'VE BEEN TO YOUR HOUSE A COUPLE TIMES.

[00:11:35]>> YOU YOU took me to Andretti one time, way back in the day.

[00:11:39]>> Oh, okay. Yeah.

[00:11:40]>> Yeah, that's his younger brother.

[00:11:43]>> Oh. Yes, um Yeah, Heiko.

[00:11:45]>> Yeah, Heiko. Yeah. All right, yeah.

[00:11:47]Heiko Winkler, yeah.

[00:11:48]>> [laughter] >> Oh, cool.

[00:11:50]It's funny how times change, huh? Yeah.

[00:11:54]I don't even think I had a permit at that time to to drive.

[00:12:00]Gentlemen, have a good evening. Oh, yeah. Yeah, GOOD SEEING YOU. YEAH. NO.

[00:12:07]OH.

[00:12:09]Your phone is in your pocket.

[00:12:12]Oh.

[00:12:13]Thank you.

[00:12:15]You know what?

[00:12:16]Later.

[00:12:18]>> [laughter] >> I was like, my phone? When you pointed, I thought you were pointing out here. I WAS LIKE, NO.

[00:12:25]>> [laughter] >> OH, MAN. LATER.

[00:12:32]YEAH. You want an apple juice?

[00:12:34]>> Yes. Connor used to rage at their house, too. He used to have like 30, 40 people there.

[00:12:38]>> I know, I remember those parties.

[00:12:40]Dude, that's Back at the house, kind of tragic news. So, I came back and I filleted the spotted sea trout. We found worms in the sea trout. We got some really great footage and I kind of explained a little bit about worms and I explained a little bit about what we're going to test for, the bacteria that we're testing for that's supposedly linked giving people ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. But, I filmed a educational video for my new YouTube channel, which I'll talk about at the end of this video, but I accidentally formatted the chips on my camera and I lost all that footage. If you've ever lost good footage, educationally good footage, it's like a heartbreak because I was so excited to share it. But, it's okay, because I'm just going to explain exactly what I did. So, we came back, I laid the sea trout out. I did take a picture of them right before I filleted them, so there it is.

[00:13:40]And, when we filleted them open, there was a bunch of these white worms inside the meat. And, that's not alarming. It's kind of normal, actually, for sea trout to have worms. Amberjack have a lot of worms. There's a lot of fish that have worms, and these worms are not bad for human consumption. Basically, what these white worms are I'll I'll add a picture of it, since I don't have any of my video footage. But, basically, these white worms, they will live inside of a trout or inside of a other fish until they basically use that fish as a host until they get eaten by a shark. When that trout, or whatever fish, gets eaten by a shark, these worms, they will live in the stomach of the shark. So, essentially, they're shark worms, and their end goal in life is to get into a shark, and they don't live inside of humans. They don't affect humans. So, if you cook them up and you eat them, they're completely safe. There's a lot of people that, if there's worms in their fish, they're completely disgusted, and they don't want to eat the worms, which is completely understandable. But, I'm just letting you guys know that the worms are okay.

[00:14:48]But, there is, supposedly, a hidden killer that's way worse than any kind of worm you could ever eat. And, in this video, I want to test the fish to see if they contain this bacteria that can lead to ALS, Lou Gehrig's disease, Alzheimer's, and potentially Parkinson's. Let me explain where this idea came from. So, my buddy, the other day, told me I told him I was going river fishing, and he basically told me, "Do not eat the fish out of the river, because, supposedly, they have these toxins, and they can really mess up your brain because of this bacteria that can attack your central nervous system. So, he told me to watch this documentary called toxic puzzle. I have some information that I wrote down about this documentary. So, basically Dr. Paul Cox and his team, they're trying to find a cure for ALS.

[00:15:45]And on their hunt for finding the cure to ALS, they came across the discovery that inside of ALS patients' brains and inside of monkeys' brains, they there was this cyano cyanobacteria present in the brains of the people that died with this disease. So, in this documentary, they're basically trying to find the link between ALS and this bacteria. And in the documentary, they find out that this bacteria, when they test for it, I believe it's called BMAA, they test for BMAAs and the red tide and these algae blooms, um if you're in Florida, you know them as the red tide.

[00:16:29]If you've seen my video that I posted a few months ago, I made a red tide video and basically all here in Florida, all along the beaches, there's just hundreds of thousands of dead fish that died because of this red tide. And it was really hard to breathe and it was just extremely uncomfortable and smelled horrible and it was like this green algae muck that was in the water. In the documentary, they basically they find places in the world where there's a lot of this red tide or this algae, this cyano cyanobacteria present and there's always increased people with the ALS disease, basically a degenerative brain disease.

[00:17:10]And parts of the US where these blooms have been happening more frequently, there's been an increase in people with Alzheimer's and Parkinson's and this ALS, which got me thinking.

[00:17:24]Uh so, I kind of have mixed feelings about documentaries. I always feel like there's a um a hidden agenda with with a lot of documentaries and they only they're kind of biased.

[00:17:36]So, that's why I want to test these fish myself to see if this BMAA is present inside of the fish. So, what I did was when I filleted the sea trout, I took a bunch of samples that I individually wrapped. I took samples of the meat that I'm going to eat and I took samples of both of the stomachs.

[00:17:57]So, I have both stomachs and I have about eight uh individually bagged pieces of meat that I would normally consume. So, I'm going to send these to a lab and I have them tested to see if the BMAA is present in that fish to see if if I'm eating it because if I am eating this bacteria, then according to the documentary, I'm increasing my risk of getting ALS and that does not sound good. So, this documentary, Toxic Puzzle, I think they were pretty honest. Um their quest isn't so they it didn't seem like they have an agenda, but their agenda was to find a cure for ALS, but in the documentary, they talk about how they want to spread this knowledge and they want everyone to know about this potential danger out in the water here, especially here in Florida, yet so, they want as many people to know about it as possible, yet they charge like two or three dollars to watch their documentary. When you charge money for a video or um especially on for a documentary, it cuts your viewers out by like it cuts out 90% of your viewers.

[00:19:10]So, why would you charge why would you make people pay money to watch this documentary when you're trying to solve a world problem? So, it's these little things that kind of confuse me, but maybe they'll reach out to me and explain better.

[00:19:26]Let's get to cooking this fish because either or I'm going to eat this fish and then we're going to find out the results later on.

[00:19:34]I have some oil and some butter in this pan, so I will start heating that up like medium-high.

[00:19:42]Here we have the the trout.

[00:19:46]And what I'm going to do is cube it up and I'm going to also kind of just cut out any of those worms that we saw.

[00:20:00]But it's it's okay to eat these worms.

[00:20:07]But this one's like a pinkish color and this one is almost pure white and uh it doesn't have any worms, so that's kind of interesting how the same fish can have very different looking meat.

[00:20:22]All right, I'm just going to do a a simple frying here where we just put the fish in some flour, dip it in some egg, dip it in some panko. This is plain panko panko seasoning, but I added some uh salt into it also.

[00:20:42]And we'll pretty much just get them ready that way.

[00:20:50]We got this fish uh breaded sea trout is ready to go into the hot oil. And some of you might be a little disgusted that there was worms in it, but I cut out any pieces that have worms in it and most likely the fish you buy in the store has worms in it.

[00:21:10]So, just a friendly reminder.

[00:21:14]I'll drop these bad boys in here.

[00:21:21]Just in a few minutes I'll start flipping them. So, I kind of take back about what I said about most fish have worms in it that you buy in the store.

[00:21:29]It's mainly certain fish like salmon and trout that are very prone to having worms. And it's actually not bad to eat the worms. They're not going to kill you and a lot of fishermen just will say it's extra protein and that's how they look at it. But it's more of a mental thing to get past eating the worms. But they're they're not like worms that are going to live in your stomach and eat your food and kill you.

[00:21:56]Time to flip all these guys.

[00:22:01]All right, fish is looking golden brown and crispy.

[00:22:07]And I would say it is ready.

[00:22:13]Ooh, ooh, ooh, look at that.

[00:22:16]That is looking real good.

[00:22:18]All right, we got the fish fried to a nice crisp golden brown.

[00:22:24]And uh let's give it a try.

[00:22:27]Don't eat that fish. Holy [ __ ] who are you? Dammit, Hyco, it's you from the future.

[00:22:34]Yeah, you need to get out of my kitchen, weirdo. That fish has BMMA.

[00:22:39]If you eat that, you're going to end up like me.

[00:22:42]This is future you.

[00:22:48]What the Wait, don't put that fish down.

[00:22:51]>> No.

[00:22:53]Wait, let me guess. You're also future me. What's wrong with this guy? I'm paralyzed from the neck down. I think that guy has ALS or Parkinson's or Alzheimer's or something.

[00:23:07]Yo, Ico.

[00:23:09][ __ ] Look, you meet a nice girl, you make one of these things.

[00:23:13]>> That's my child?

[00:23:14]>> You get married. That really doesn't sound that bad. After 2 years, she becomes a vegan. What's up with the hair? She likes it when you have hair like this. She makes you sell your boat.

[00:23:27]>> Oh, no.

[00:23:29]Well, I see you're still wearing an Enzlo shirt. That's a good sign, right?

[00:23:34]Yeah, Enzlo's still going strong, making a hundred million dollars a year now, but uh you haven't fished in 2 years, so ask yourself, is it worth it?

[00:23:44]Can I have a pony? You want a pony?

[00:23:47]Yeah.

[00:23:48]Or are you going to get one?

[00:23:54]Damn it, Ico.

[00:24:02]Well, what can I say? It tastes like a good a nice good fried fish, really.

[00:24:08]I just can't think about >> [snorts] >> all the other things happening around me right now.