Now that Maryland has reinstituted last season’s Snakehead bounty, gifting anglers a $200 Gift certificate from Bass Pro Shops for each kill, most of the state is likely mulling dumping their day job and becoming a Bounty Killer in the image of Clint Eastwood ..
As always, your friends and family won’t understand, and they’ll huddle tearfully on the lawn as you back your boat out of the garage. They missed the earlier fireworks where you hurled your paper hat into your ex-boss’s face, an underemployed-desperation job you’d landed when your first career imploded due to the housing crisis, and while fishing is undoubtedly more honorable than manning a drive thru window, after you earn every fly rod, every reel, and every accessory possible for your too-stuffed vest, can Bass Pro really put food on your table?
While their catalog boasts 600 items containing the word “food”, most appear to be things you sprinkle or spray so you can lure Bambi into rock throwing range, and the rest are best served as ingredients for a still, in the vain hope fermentation might improve its flavor.
… although their Ass Kicking Jelly Beans might serve as stellar breakfast food …
Which has always been the knock on voucher bounty, once you’ve stuffed your garage full of the complimentary American cheese, your interest wanes for your real mission, which is killing invasives.
… that and your landlord is less than thrilled when you offer two thousand yards of Dyneema and four gross of motor-oil flavored twisty grubs for another month’s rent.
Unlike the awesome cash bounty placed on my beloved Pikeminnow, which has made the papers each year – given the $4 – $8 bounty paid for each corpse larger than nine inches. At last count over 3 million fish had been removed from the Greater Columbia drainage.
I’m just surprised there’s not a government program for stocking the pike minnow.
What’s the hold-up on a bounty on Asian carp ? Here’s an Invasive where the only gear you need is a big boat, a noisy outboard motor and a football helmet. The fish do the rest, and you get paid for it.
How can you expect the goverment to pay you for fun??? Going Mad Max on a bunch of porky jumping trash fish is ‘reality’ TV waiting to happen…We got tuna fishermen,bug exterminators,gator hunters,over siliconed trashy new money women….Drunken pinheads with big boats and spears will fit right in…..
Yeah? Wait till the snakeheads and the Asian carp interbreed. I’m picturing “Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdock”, stroked-and-bored woodgas-fired airboats with a hundred pitchforks welded on the front, piloted by Mohawk-wearing psychos in flyfishing vests made from human skin and…..
Oh. Excuse me. ^o^
Just think how much Mizlan over at Dark Art Caster could make turning in Snakeheads, if he wasn’t a catch & release type guy.
Mark
So, anyone have any advice about teaching a cat how to fetch?
I’m just trying to figure out whether me and Smedley are related, he might be from them downstream Barton’s …
I like it already.
I’m being lazy as I should look it up myself but do you know whether the bounty has actually had any impact on Pikeminnow populations – actually had any of the desired effect? The situation kind of reminds me of the pike culls on the Irish Loughs. Didn’t work – just resulted in a proliferation of small and medium sized pike.
Friend Eccles, I’ve found no mention on the topic outside of conjecture. They gleefully post the body count but I’ve not seen anything that quantifies any benefits.