The Curious Tale Of My YouTube Video, "Pufferfish Puffed".

Six years ago, my good friend and professional fishing guide, Denny Voyles invited me along for a little grouper fishing. 

Denny is a very busy guide and has a nose for where the fish are, so only a fool declines such an offer.

We were a few miles out in about 40 feet of water and it was gorgeous. The weather was perfect, the water was so clear and blue you could just see the shadowy shapes of the rocks on the bottom.

We were catching grouper, mostly just under the limit, but a few keepers and then ... Denny accidentally snagged the side of a large Southern Puffer who had followed his bait up.

It was that simple, everyday fishing event that produced a 36-second video with over a million views ... most of them in the past 4 months.
1,135,727 views, but who's counting ...
 .

For 6 years the video sat slowly gathering views and comments ... then this year something changed.

My email was constantly pinging with comment notices, often followed by subscription notices from people all over the planet. 

Clearly, people love Pufferfish.

To be more clear, they love PUFFED Pufferfish.

They also love fart noises coming from a fish.

Over and over the comments made note of the puffers farty sounding grunt and the time in the video where it happens.

As in this comment:

"00:27 you can thank me later"

or several like this one:

"00:27 did that fish fart?"

There are also countless references to the poor driving instructor, "Mrs. Puff" and "Spongebob".

When Denny expertly and harmlessly removes the hook from the Puffer's thick skin, some viewers see the large chunk of bait on his hook as the guts of the Puffer being ripped out.

As in:

"I hope somebody puts a hook in you and rips your guts out some day!"

I pinned a comment explaining that the flesh on the hook was bait and that the fish was fine when we released it to calm down folks who misinterpreted reality.

Yesterday, I received an email from a large media corporation to use that video on their various media platforms... with credit back to me.

It seems to me that would just allow folks to see Pufferfish Puffed without actually visiting my YouTube channel, so that's a big NO.

Had there been a six figure check involved, well then we could have talked.