Replacing Your Fishing Gear For Cheap!

An article in the New London Day (registration required after today; longer lasting version here, 3rd story down) reminded me of the stories we used to hear about fishermen in Groton going and putting their old lobster pots in the middle of the traffic lanes so they could get the Navy to buy them new ones when the subs "hit" them.

"At first Chaplaski thought his net had snagged on the bottom, 1,200 feet below. Then something began pulling the 150-ton steel boat backward, causing it to shake violently.
"Chaplaski raced to the winch to release the brakes on the five-eighths-inch-thick steel wire attached to the net and the twin 1,000-pound “doors” that keep the net open. That prevented the boat from capsizing. He later discovered that one of the wires had been sliced in half.
“It was over in a matter of seconds, but the crew was really shaken,” he said. “It could have been much worse.”
"Chaplaski, who lives on Flanders Road, is convinced that his gear became entangled with one of the two U.S. submarines he had seen about two miles from the Neptune shortly before the incident."

Now, I know it's been done before where a sub has pulled a fishing boat along without knowing they had someone hooked, but I don't think it's ever been done when there was another boat nearby to tell their "partner" where the surface traffic was. I suppose it could always be a first...

Anyway, feel free to discuss your run-ins with fishing boats in the comments this weekend.

Going deep...