Look at how cute she is, and then look at any picture of JG. Surely, something miraculous is at work, whether directly controlled, or not.
I didn't know this until spring break, but evidently they do replica mounts for everything now. Gives that sow a chance to put that belly full of eggs to good work.
Quick ethics question: So let's say you are pulling a couple of young hooligans on an innertube in a ski boat, an you notice, in the middle of a really big bay on a really big lake, a spot of orange bobbing oddly in the water. Upon closer inspection and some help from the hooligans, you discover that it is a pool noodle rigged for what I would have called jug fishing, had the noodle been a jug. And attached to the noodle-jug rig is a 5# channel cat. Looking around the bay, there does not appear to be any sign of anyone looking for noodle-jugs, and a closer look doesn't reveal any other jugs in the area. It would be reasonable to speculate, though not a certainty, that someone was jug fishing the night before and this one, attached to a fish, had gotten lost. There is a phone number (an 800 number, actually,) scribbled on the noodle, but it is faint to the point of illegibility. There is no address or name. The hook is buried into the fish's mouth in such a way that it would be very difficult, and possible dangerous, to extract without proper tools. Do you: 1. Put the jug-noodle back in the water and wish both fish and fisherman good karma? 2. End the tubing session, rush the fish back to base, and try to surgically remove the hook in such a way and in such time that the fish can be released back into the wild? 3. Call 800-971-1234...800-971-1235...800-971-1236...? 4. Have fish for dinner? Just a hypothetical moral quandry.
seeing as the fish might not survive travel to base and then extraction of the hook, and odds are the owner of the noodle will never find it, fish for dinner.
Vandy Law, you say? Per TWRA: It’s a mistake to assume that a trot fisherman must have multiple lines / jugs. I know several people who will throw out a single line / jug while they fish elsewhere, and check / harvest whatever it may have caught upon return / leaving. One jug mustn’t necessarily be either lost or irretrievable. Is it a reasonable possibility that someone forgot to check the line, that it got lost, was irretrievable, or was otherwise unattended? Certainly, yes. But are there other and perhaps equally reasonable possibilities beyond those, which you are perhaps ignorant of, or could not be known, and which should have prevented your intervention beyond investigating an odd rig floating in the water - and which includes de-hooking the fish and returning it to the wild, or harvesting it for yourself? Also, certainly yes. Simply, you don’t know who’s jug that was, why it was where it was, when it was last checked, whether or not it’s been lost, how to contact the rightful operator of that equipment to learn more, or even if it’s lawful for such to be operated in those waters or in such a way, at all. The good news is there are people who have exactly the necessary level of training, ability, resources and experience to further investigate circumstances just such as these, and who are vested with the requisite authority to best make these sort of determinations - TWRA Game Wardens. And while it’s true that we don’t know who’s fish that was, whether it was legally obtained or not, or a myriad of other pertinent facts, it seems beyond any question that neither it nor the jug belonged to you, that you equally lacked both the responsibility or authority to intervene in any manner beyond a quick and cursory examination of the rig itself, and that it would be wrong if you to have done anything more or beyond that, alone. You should have put it back, and done nothing. If questions or concerns had persisted, you should have referred it to TWRA, and allowed them to act on it, or not.
shotgun approach: try all the numbers you could reasonably guess, if it is down to 5 or less. if no dice, you could either leave it be or take the fish and hook and leave your number and an iou 1 catfish message. taking the gear and fish seems like leaving a good story unwritten.
