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hooked up a empty handle of crown royal on the end and put it back down the hole.
The most elaborate was the winter after I took enough scuba diving classes and had certification and equipment to do ice dives. We built a very good sized shack that had a large opening on one end in the floor. The idea here was we wanted to have a sturgeon spearing shack. Anyway...dragged it out to a local lake that is very, very popular and cut a hole in the ice with an ice saw that was big enough for a person to fit through. Then started messing with people one day by going into the water inside the shack and started by letting things float up into tip-up and jigging holes from below. Bobbers, full soda cans, and on and on....then popping tip-ups out of the holes from under the ice. Hung all sorts of junk on tip-ups...shoes, 3 ring binders, coffee mugs, etc. Good times.
a couple years ago i hooked a trout, and it pulled off some line and wrapped around the line on my buddy's rod about 5 feet away. we both thought we had a double until i realized that his "huge trout" just HAPPENED to surge every time i pulled on my end. so i let it go dead (by this time the trout was loooong gone) and he disappointedly set his rod back down and left to go check the dead rods; i reeled the line up, tied a good solid knot between his line and mine, attached a sinker and sent it back to the bottom.my buddy comes back, and i wait about 3 minutes before reeling up tight and giving it a good hard yank. he just stood there in stunned silence as his rod went in a perfect arc off the bucket and straight down the hole. after consoling him for a few minutes over his terrible luck, i set the hook into a "nice one", gave it a nice fight and landed a 26" eagle claw. i said "well, dang, that's a keeper!", clipped the line, and tossed it in the fish bucket. we still laugh about it to this day.
Back in the olden days of real Christmas trees I had a buddy who would drill a hole close to the door of my fish house and plant his old Christmas tree in it and let it freeze. It made for a trip back home to get the saw!!
Many, many years ago on a lake in Northern Massachusetts, we left a buddy on the ice to watch the tip-ups while we went to a nearby diner for a quick snack. We brought him back a doughnut and a cup of Joe. It was just after dark, and when our buddy bit into his "jelly" doughnut, he found it contained not only jelly, but catsup, mustard and mayo. I can still hear him spitting and cursing!
Now that's funny , most we ever do is put the depth finder on a unattended line