Not your normal fishing trip!

Back in the day, every Friday night, my buddy Dale and I would go night fishing. One night we headed to the Gandy Bridge in Tampa, hoping to catch some reds or snook. On the way we stopped at a nearby bait shop to pick up three dozen hand-selected shrimp, which were not cheap. We arrived at the pier and started what we always do, bait the hooks, throw them out, set them in the railing on the dock and tied the bait bucket to the pier.

We were chatting with some other fishers and eventually I noticed a bait bucket floating underneath the dock. I looked at my buddy, Dale, and said, "Hey look, some dummy lost their bait bucket."

He said, "Wait. That looks an awful lot like our bait bucket."

IT WAS OUR BAIT BUCKET.

Dale said we should just go home, we were done for the night. We had no bait and no bucket to get more. But I'm a MacGuyver. I had a plan. I ran to my truck and got a snatch strap from the back, with hooks on both sides, and headed for the bridge.

I ran down the bridge (Tampa to St. Pete) and lowered the strap to snag the bucket. I got it! I started to pull the bucket up... and it fell back in the bay. Well, I am not a quitter. I ran back down the bridge to the reverse side (St. Pete to Tampa). I fished (pun intended) for the bucket again with my snatch strap, hooked it and pulled it up!

By now, all the fishers on the pier were watching me fish that bait bucket out of the bay. They started clapping and we celebrated our big catch.

Its the only thing we caught all night... but a catch is a catch!