Fishing Snipe Hunt Prank - Part Two

Ron and I met at the appointed time and place and it had been a very interesting day but now we were ready to do some serious fishing. We loaded his aluminum jon boat into the creek with our gear along with the 15# block of dry ice. Ron got out his contraption of a trolling motor and attached it on the jon boat. I had never seen anything like he had before nor since. It had a large blade like from a box fan that must have been 12-15" in diameter. The shaft was secured on the back of the boat and it had a handle that he would pump up and down to turn the blade. I was always surprised how well it worked and all he did was pump the handle up and down and we would move slowly forward. Lots of stories went with that trolling device like the time we put in at Black Creek and he was pumping us along and we ran up on a stump about an inch below the water surface. We were stuck in that black water like a teeter totter smack dab in the middle of the boat. If either of us moved the boat would tilt and we would get water over the front, side or back. We had to be very careful as this creek was full of nasty large snakes. I had seen one water moccasin that was as big around as my leg and 6-7' long. It was clearly not a swimming creek.

He had me throw the anchor out to try to catch the bottom and pull us off and he would pump that trolling device like mad to propel us off that stump. The anchor was a window sash weight on a clothes line and wouldn't hold to the bottom to pull us free of that stump. All he was doing was putting foam on the top of the water with his mad pumping of that device.  We had tipped forward and back and pivoted on that stump for a good hour before we got pulled off by another boat we hailed over to help us. I expect those guys are still talking about the two idiots that were perfectly centered on a stump and couldn't get off. Every once and awhile I get a sense of uproarious laughter and I know that story is being retold.

Anyway back to this story. The first thing we noticed was that the mosquito's were fierce. Luckily I had brought some repellent with me and we both slathered in oily repellent. Then we were ready to fish and Ron said to hand him some dry ice. I had a ice pick with me so I chipped off a piece for him. That is when we noticed that when the smaller pieces flew out of the cooler and hit the metal boat that they would zing across that metal making a zip-zinging sound everywhere they hit. It was hard not to have them fly out when we broke off pieces of dry ice. After both getting baited up he tossed his out and so did I. The bubbles and gurgling were obvious. Big frothy bubbles coming up from the creek bottom. We fished several pieces of dry ice as he pumped us along the creek and made a lot of zinging and gurgling sounds on the way.

Neither of us got a bite but we kept fishing that dry ice lowering the temperature of the creek as we went. We knew that 12 pounder would be moving off with our dry ice bait at any minute. We fished along talking about this technique and our expectations until about 3:00 AM. After that we just fished and had nothing much to say. After a little more fishing and using the remainder of our dry ice in total silence I could tell that Ron was thinking that young woman in the silk house coat would make a much better fishing pardner that I was being. I was thinking about pretty much the same thing. Around 4:00 AM, I mentioned discretely to Ron that I thought we had been had and he promptly agreed. Actually he was a little too fast on agreeing. I suggested that we head back to the dock hopefully to get the boat loaded and be gone before the proprietor showed up as I didn't want to hear the laughing and "well, how did you do", questions. Ron pumped us back to the ramp in record time almost putting that boat on a plane and we fortunately avoided the guffaws and questions.

No question about it that we surely had been had and this time really good. I'm glad we deprived them of the satisfaction of seeing the result of their handy work.