Howdy folks! Just a little trip down memory lane I thought I'd share.

I had a buddy on the coast, he had a restaurant/bait shop/bar for a lot of years. Every now and then at closing time, if the right crew was handy, he'd pass the hat around the bar and hold a "character contest". This had nothing to do with the character of the participants, I assure you.

Everyone who wanted to participate would put a tenner in the hat and walk out onto his dock. This was a fishing tournament. Only 2 rules. Biggest ANYTHING reeled in wins, and you had to use his tackle. Winner gets whatever is in the hat.

He had a trashcan full of "character" rods. There was Micky and Minnie, Sponge Bob, Little Mermaid, Scooby Doo, etc... All the little "toy" rods from Walmart.

He kept us furnished with beer and bait and we'd fish until sunrise. It was once won by a large chunk of oyster reef that somehow got reeled in.

Great times and a great friend I miss terribly. What whacky wonky fishing stuff have you been a part of?

Love that story!! Sounds like a blast!!

not as good or kooky as the fishing tournament, but the place under the surfside bridge used to furnish ping pong paddles with numbers(1-10) to the tables facing the boat ramp. customers would score the folks putting in or taking out boats. sometimes it would get pretty rough, but if your girlfriend or wife was helping with the boat and she had a bikini on and looked good, you were sure to get a 10, no matter how bad you botched the job.

OMG that's hilarious. Launching for a score, the pressure is on!

I have another funny story involving the same friend and his daughter, who I dated for a while. She was about 13 years my junior and called me her "dirty old man." I told her "I'll have you know that I'm 19 from the waist down. Her reply was always, "Too bad you're 12 from the neck up."

We used to borrow his boat to go out anchoring in the deep blue. We were pulling out one morning, she was driving the boat and I was tending to the tackle. A tip top on a rod came off, so I dug around in the console and found the Krazy Glue in the dark. I got the tip top reattached, reached into the cooler for a little early morning eye opener, walked to the helm and grabbed her butt. Yes.... I ended up with her shorts glued to one hand and a beer can glued to the other.

She shimmied down to her bikini bottoms and made a U-turn back to port, just shaking her head. When we pulled up her dad was scrubbing his dock with a push broom and her step-mom (not a whole lot older than her) was having coffee reading the paper. As he was tying us off, wondering why we were back, I held my hands up with a beer can glued to one and her shorts glued to the other.

Her step-mom just shook her head, went inside and came out with a bottle of Cutex fingernail polish remover. After that her dad always kept a bottle of Cutex on the boat.