Fishing for . . . . What?

Yes, I know, you are getting tired of fishing stories, but this is not quite the usual fishing story. Bear with me while I try to tell this just as it happened.

It was back a few years ago, probably around 15 or 20 years ago, I decided to take a break and go catch me a big ole bass out of my swamp. It was still daylight, so just put a big old plastic worm on the hook with a worm sinker. Figured that I would just go down to what we called the dam area. Sometimes I spelled it differently (grin).

It was quiet and the water was smooth as glass. I walked softly over to where the woods came into the water. There were some tall weeds to my right that created a wall that couldn’t be penetrated with a fishing lure. So, I cast the worm over some low water plants and out into the open water. Got a strike on the first cast, but missed it. Sometimes the smaller bass go after those big old worms and only get the tail, so figured that is what happened.

Not another bump on the next half dozen casts, but then I got a whopper of a hit. Bent my casting rod dang near double. I set the hook real good and got ready for a good fight. Good fight indeed!!! “This had to be the Mother of all bass, a real hog, probably mated with a whale at some point”; my mind was trying to comprehend this whopper on the other end of my line.

Then I got it worked close enough to shore so I could get a glimpse of it. It was no fish, but a big ole Cotton-Mouth Snake!!! Well, I was not going to be outdone by a snake, so I kept fighting it until I got it into the shallow water where those water plants and grasses where. Well, he (or she) wrapped itself around all the weeds it could get a hold of. I pulled as hard as I could and had the pole doubled over.

Then my mind remembered a small part of a movie I had seen. Do you remember the 1988 film with Chevy Chase called “Funny Farm”? There was a part in it where Chevy was fishing in the tank (farm pond) and yanked in a big ole snake that wrapped around his neck and he had to fight it off. Well, I admit, I may not be as smart as Einstein, but at that moment I was being dumber than the character Chevy Chase was playing in that movie. So, just as I was coming to my senses and was contemplating cutting the line, it saved me the trouble and broke. If those weeds the snake had wrapped itself around had pulled out or broke off, I would have had a poisonous, mad snake wrapped around my neck instead of a movie prop. I’ll bet the writers for that movie would have never guessed that something like that could happen in real life.

Ok, now I will promise not to have another fishing story for you tomorrow. . .