Fishing Snipe Hunt Prank - Part One

Several years ago when I was living in Jacksonville I was out one morning trying to track down a witness and couldn't find the road she lived on. I stopped at a bait shack on Little Pottsburg Creek to ask directions and while the proprietor was giving me directions a boat pulled onto the ramp and I could hear fish flopping around in his live well. The proprietor heard it too and asked the man how he did. The guy said 'look' and opened his live well top. I looked in and he had his limit of 10 large mouth bass and the smallest was over 5 pounds. A couple looked to go 10-12 pounds. I was stunned and we commenced to talk about them. I asked him where he got them and he told me they all came from Little Pottsburg Creek. My next question was what he caught them on. He and the proprietor exchanged cagey looks and finally he was told its okay to tell me as I seemed like a pretty good guy.

He commenced to tell me I probably wouldn't believe it but he caught them on dry ice. He said I would need a Bull Durham tobacco bag, a half ounce slip sinker, a treble hook and lots of dry ice. He then told me how to rig it up by putting the slip sinker on the line, then running the line through the Bull Durham bag and out the bottom and then tying on the treble hook. He said you then put a chunk of dry ice in the bag and pull the drawstring closed and toss it out to lay on the bottom. Only the big fish would go for it as it scared the smaller ones away. He said the dry ice bubbling would make the fish curious and then angry and they would grab it and try to carry it away. That is when you set the hook and the fight would be on. He told me he knew it sounded crazy but it worked and the proprietor said he too knew it worked too. They made reference to a recent article in Outdoor Life magazine about fishing with an Alka Seltzer tablet that did the same thing.

I then left and went to get my witness testimony pondering what I just heard. I found the witness location quite a ways back off the road and was invited in and sat at the kitchen table. I started to take the testimony and these young women started to come from the back of the house partially clad. One came out only in her birthday suit and got a cup of coffee and sat down cross legged across from me while I was taking down the needed information. The older lady told her to go put something on so she left and came back with a silk house coat open in the front and untied. She again sat cross legged on a chair across from me. There had to be 6-8 young women all partially dressed drinking coffee and making toast for themselves and I was anxious to get my testimony and leave. It was clear they were not all artist models or in the garment business and they were pretty distracting while I was trying to do my job. Anyway, back to the fishing story...

As I went on working that morning I kept thinking and pondering that technique for catching BIG largmouth bass. The more I thought about it the more it sounded just crazy enough to work. I thought I should discuss it with my fishing partner so later that day I drove by the department store he managed and told him about it. I also told him about the scantly clad young women I had encountered especially the one in the silk house coat that left nothing to the imagination. He thought about the technique too and said it just might work. He said the furniture they sold had to be assembled and the parts came in a bag much like a Bull Durham bag and he would empty out the nuts and bolts and bring some bags and we could try it that very night. We would take his flat bottom aluminium jon boat and meet at 8:00 PM at the boat ramp. I was to buy some dry ice so I drove across town to an ice cream manufacturer and bought a 15# block of dry ice. I then headed home to get my fishing gear and make some sandwiches and pack some chips.

We met that night at the appointed place and time and part two will tell the rest of the story. Continued.....