Years ago when Bass Pro Shop was being birthed in the back half of a Brown Derby Liquor store and curly tail grubs could only be obtained by big name Professional fisherman, my best friend and I were young, newly married men that felt if our wives didn't let go bass fishing at least once every seven to ten days we would surely die.

We were both barely getting by and putting out money for the latest lures and equipment was hard to swallow, but we would scrape and rat hole money to buy the latest rods, reels, and lures that we knew poor boy wannabes like us just couldn't live without. Late one afternoon we were fishing a good area just as the light was fading to the point that everything was basically silhouettes ..., my buddy had been doing well on a new crank bait he had just bought and on another long cast had hooked a good one again. His pole was bent and was being pulled from side to side as he horsed this one up to the little Terry bass boat.
I got the net ready and leaned forward just as he pulled a dark writhing, twisting, snake out of the water. There was just enough light for us both to tell that it was still really putting up a fight. I told him I was going to cut the line and he told me he didn't want to lose his new high dollar lure. I hate snakes especially when it's dark, and I told him what I thought about the situation we were in and made it clear that cutting the line was our only option. He yelled back at me not to cut the line and we started yelling at each other even louder..... All the while we were yelling at each other the writhing, twisting action of the snake hanging from his rod began to get slower and slower and finally slow down to the point that we both realized he had hooked about an inch thick, three and a half foot long, knarly, tree root that had wound his line up like a watch spring and made him think he had a fish and then made us both think it was a snake as it unwound when it was pulled from the water ..... We both suddenly busted out laughing and after all these years still laugh about what total idiots we sounded like and felt like at that moment ..... Oh what great times we had back then ....