A guy I went to school with was pretty good friends with my ex-brother-in-law and was as much as an avid outdoorsman as any teenager could be in the mid-nineties. He was always hunting, fishing or bragging about one or the other.
For several weeks he had been talking up this secret fishing spot that was loaded with big bass. My ex-wife and I, her brother and wife and Mr. Teenage Outdoorsman finally found the time and set off to fish this secret spot.
We were in two cars and even though it was an official county road a big section of it was literally driving in a creek bed with several nice size rocks to navigate so it took forever in a Honda Accord and Subaru. We finally came out of the rough creek and drove awhile longer when Mr. Outdoorsman stopped his car.
He got out to tell us we had to walk the rest of the way which was 1/2 mile or so through a cow pasture. We finally arrived at his secret spot only to realize it’s nothing more than a small cattle pond. I was a little upset to say the least but we had trekked that far and I was curious if he was being truthful and wanted the bragging rights of landing a big one.
We all started throwing some cast in with no action when my ex-wife belted that she had a bite. I told her to set the hook as hard as she could and started walking the few feet towards her. The pole dropped she yanked and set the hook and pulled a massive snake out of the pond that flew right by my head between us.
She threw the pole down and was gone! At this point I was pretty ticked and was just ready to go. We packed it in and called it a day with zero fish caught by anyone. Way back then we thought any snake like that had to be a water moccasin and was sure that’s what it was. I know now there is zero moccasins in that area of TN. We talked smack to Mr. Teenage Outdoorsman for many years after that about his secret spot holding monsters.
