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Odd Catches (Things 'Caught' While Fishing)

Mighty_Emperor

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Odd things found whilst fishing like:

Military projectile fished from lake

By Deana Poole, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Monday, February 23, 2004


A fishing foursome netted quite a catch on Lake Osborne near Lake Worth Sunday.

Under the Sixth Avenue bridge, they retrieved what deputies believe is an M81 rocket-propelled grenade -- a deadly military projectile packing the punch of a dynamite stick.

The discovery prompted the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office to dispatch more than 20 deputies, a mobile command unit and its bomb squad. While they investigated, county fire-rescue crews and park rangers stood by and the area was cordoned off with yellow crime-scene tape. For two hours, Sixth Avenue was shut down to motorists and boaters were kept away from the bridge.

Finally, a member of the bomb squad with great care scooped the grenade from the sidewalk and slipped it into a bombproof container. Deputies looked on in dead silence as he completed the task.

The bomb squad X-rayed the projectile, and it appeared to be empty, said Sheriff Ed Bieluch.

"They feel that it is safe," Bieluch said. "Until we actually get it apart -- detonate it -- we won't know."

Lake Worth resident Daniel Smith had been fishing with his son, stepson and one of their friends for a half-hour when they netted the 18-inch-long silver and green device.

"I thought it was some type of torpedo," Smith said of the finned, shoulder-launched projectile.

The triggering or firing mechanism on the grenade was missing, Bieluch said. Divers searched under the Sixth Avenue bridge to try to see what more they could find.

Sheriff's officials said they will seek help today from military munitions experts in Cape Canaveral. From the identification number etched on the grenade they hope to verify exactly what kind of weapon it is, as well as its age. That hopefully will help police figure out how it got into the lake.

Sheriff's spokesman Paul Miller said the grenade was not rusty, indicating it hadn't been in the water very long.

"Luckily they were smart enough to put it down and call us," Bieluch said.

The scare at John Prince Park wasn't the only one in Palm Beach County Sunday.

In Boynton Beach, law enforcement officials cordoned off two blocks and evacuated residents after a man discovered two explosive devices outside his home, said Lt. Wendy Unger, a city police spokeswoman.

The man was doing yard work in the 400 block of Southeast First Street when he noticed the 6-inch devices near trash cans along the curb. The devices were made of PVC pipe with fuses protruding from the sides, Unger said.

City police called in the county bomb squad, and by early evening sheriff's deputies had detonated the devices without causing any damage. Unger said the devices "were not sophisticated in any way" and did not appear to be placed near a specific target.

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/localn...s/monday/local_news_049388ae348441d10076.html

Sooooooooooooo many unaswered questions.

Emps
 
Published: Tuesday, May 11, 2004

Lynnwood angler catches a wedding gown hiding in lake


By Yoshiaki Nohara
Herald Writer

LYNNWOOD - It was early Monday morning and Ryan Snow was casting his line into Martha Lake.

Snow, 22, of Lynnwood, was looking for trout and hooked something really heavy. He thought he snagged a log or something on the bottom.

Instead he pulled up a white dress, muddy and rusty. He couldn't see what was in the dress - and he was scared to find out if something was.

"I thought it still had something in it," he said.

He called his uncle Mark Snow, 50, who was on shore, to come help.

They pulled on the dress. Up it came, and it kept coming. "I had no clue what would happen," Ryan Snow said.

It was an empty wedding gown. Muddy and brown, with some rust. The blue beads along the front and hem gave the anglers an idea of how it must have looked.

"I'm sure it was gorgeous," Mark Snow said.

How the dress got there will have to remain a mystery, perhaps known only to the fish that weren't biting. Ryan Snow admitted that while the day's catch was funny, it also was a bit creepy.

If anyone is interested in a free wedding dress, the anglers left it on the fence at the lake.

It just smells a bit from being at the bottom of the lake.

http://www.heraldnet.com/stories/04/05/11/loc_gown001.cfm
 
Weird how stuff just turns up like that wedding dress:

Wednesday, May 12, 2004

Booty from Lake Crescent 's murky bottom priceless to Lakewood woman

By CAROL SMITH
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

It may not have been sunken treasure, but the booty retrieved this weekend from the murky bottom of Lake Crescent was priceless to Beverly Sherman of Lakewood.

Sherman was only 20 when the car she rode in veered out of control around a curve and plunged into the icy lake near Port Angeles in 1960. All four occupants of the car swam to safety, but their belongings have lain in a watery grave for the past 44 years. On Saturday, a team of 11 divers used a remotely operated device to wrench open the car's trunk.

The divers retrieved Sherman's gray-blue Skyway bag, its leather handle still intact, and a small case belonging to fellow passenger and then-date Gary Lind, who now lives in Paris.

"I was so excited," said Sherman, 64, a retired music and fine-arts supervisor for the Bellingham School District. Sherman couldn't wait to see what might have been preserved.

At the time of the accident, she had just returned to Washington after spending six months in New York City, where her father was studying at Columbia University.

"I had all this memorabilia -- matchbooks and menus, the kind of stuff you collect when you're 20," she said. And she discovered she had an "Aurora borealis crystal" teardrop pendant on a tarnished chain. "It's not the (Heart of the Ocean) necklace from the Titanic, but it's mine."

So were the cat's-eye sunglasses, which her grown daughter dubbed "pretty cool."

Anything that was taffeta, nylon or rayon, such as her lingerie, survived. Her wool, flannel and cotton items had disintegrated.

And a favorite pair of electric blue suede stiletto heels?

Alas, the heels aren't blue anymore, but then neither are the memories of a night that could have been a tragedy.

It was Jan. 24, 1960, and a freezing rain coated the road as the two young couples drove home from a friend's house. Dale Steele was at the wheel of the 1950 Dodge sedan when he missed a curve and the car plunged off U.S. Route 101 near mile marker 223. Sherman remembers seeing phosphorescence as the headlights beamed through the water and the car knifed into the lake.

She remembers Dale saying: "Be calm. Sit still." But her instinct was to get out, so she rolled down the window and swam for her life. The others followed. Diane "Dee Dee" Cowles, who is now Steele's wife, was tangled in a blanket and was the last to surface.

It was the same set of curves that claimed another car and likely sealed the fate of a young couple -- Blanch and Russell Warren -- three decades earlier in 1929.

A 2002 story in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer about finding the Warrens' 1927 Chevrolet submerged under 170 feet of water is what triggered Sherman's quest. After reading about the discovery, Sherman got in touch with diver Bill Walker of Burien.

Walker, who has been diving in Lake Crescent since 1967, had never heard about Sherman's wreck, but was happy to help.

"You could sense they were still traumatized by it," said Walker, who eventually located Steele's car within 200 yards of the Warren car.

"It gave me some closure," said Sherman, who used to "white-knuckle it" when driving around lakes or any time she couldn't see around a curve.

Sherman isn't sure what she might do with the remnants of the 44- year-old time capsule of her youth. She's preserving what she can.

For example, she has put a book, "The Story of the Northwest," which was reclaimed from the back seat of the car, in water until she figures out how best to restore it.

"Everything we brought up is oxidizing so fast, or if it was glued, it's just falling apart," she said.

Walker, who estimates he's made 2,000 dives in Lake Crescent over the years, said he plans to go back for more.

"You always find something new," he said.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/172963_lake12.html

Emps
 
And how some stuff doesn't:

Divers strike out again in Sudbury: No sign of Babe's piano

By Associated Press

Monday, June 14, 2004SUDBURY -- Divers searched through the silt of a Sudbury pond yesterday for an elusive piano that -- according to legend -- Red Sox slugger Babe Ruth pushed into the water, but surfaced without so much as a pedal or a piano string.

"Personally, I believe in providence, and I think we've gone too far for it not to be there," said piano-hunter Eloise Newell.

A veteran underwater search expert, John Fish, has helped the enterprise by searching for promising underwater spots at the 1-mile-diameter Willis Pond, but the three-diver expedition struck out for the fourth time yesterday. It is actually the fifth search; the first was with a camera lowered into the water.

Newell believes the piano will be found buried somewhere in the muck at the bottom of the pond. She's using the search to raise awareness about mental illness, which she equates with the stigma of the "Curse of the Bambino" against the Red Sox.

The Red Sox sold the Babe to the New York Yankees in 1919, the year after the Red Sox won the World Series. The Red Sox haven't won a World Series since, and superstitious Red Sox fans say that was the start of the curse.

Just as the Red Sox curse should be lifted, Newell feels that people with mental illness also live with underserved stigma that should be banished.

The Babe vacationed at the cabin during the offseason in 1917 and 1918, and is said to have dunked the piano in the offseason after the 1918 World Series. It's not clear how the piano might have ended up in the pond, though theories abound, many involving the Babe's legendary fondness for alcohol.

One theory is that Ruth tossed it in as a display of strength, and another is that Ruth wanted to be rid of it because it was out of tune. Still another is that the Babe moved the piano onto the frozen pond for a children's singalong, then left it on the pond, where it eventually fell through the ice.

http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=70733
 
Fishermen on a California river reel in a couple of live pipe bombs.
Anglers on California river reel in live pipe bombs

A pair of anglers on a California river ended up calling the authorities when they reeled in a pair of particularly deadly catches -- homemade pipe bombs.

John Kenyon said he was fishing with family members on the Sacramento River, near the mouth of Battle Creek, when he reeled in an unexpected object. ...

"My father-in-law had the net ready and we got it up towards the boat and we thought it was an anchor," Kenyon told KOVR-TV. "My father-in-law said it's a bomb, and he's like, 'Everybody gets to the front of the boat!'"

Kenyon said he was in the process of calling the Shasta County Sheriff's Office when a nearby fisherman called out.

"He yelled at me and said, 'it's another bomb,'" Kenyon said.

The Shasta County Bomb Squad responded to the scene and confirmed the objects were homemade pipe bombs. Both bombs were live, investigators said. The bombs were safely detonated at the scene.

Kenyon said he believes the bombs were likely thrown into the water by other anglers.

"I think that they're trying to blow up salmon, knocking them out and having them float up and taking them," Kenyon said.

FULL STORY (With Video):
https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2020/0...-river-reel-in-live-pipe-bombs/9631599080171/
 
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