THE GIANT NUCLEAR MUTANT FROG

FISHING FOR WINTER TADPOLES
By Mike Colin
Most people would not think of tadpoles as being a delicious delicacy. Actually, the little tikes you find swimming in ditches and murky ponds in the spring and summer do taste quite awful. I ate some on a dare once and ended up getting my stomach pumped. In fairness to the tadpoles I also ate on a dare that day some tree bark, some lily pads and some raw road kill. But, out of everything I ate that day the tadpoles tasted the worst. The main lesson I learned from that ordeal is not to let your older brothers dare you to do anything.

Now as I was saying about tadpoles, the little boogers most people think of are not good to eat however, there is a type of tadpole that lives in Northern Michigan and it is just right for the dinner table but, they are not available until after the snow is piled high. These tadpoles are gray in color and can get up to seven feet long and unlike their summer cousins, these tadpoles have rows and rows of sharp, nasty teeth that can rip through a fiberglass boat like a chainsaw. I can still see the one I lost a few years ago from the shoreline. It sank in about five feet of water.

Now these large, toothy but tasty tadpoles I have found only in one small lake in Michigan. It is not far from where I grew up as a kid. The lake is in the exact spot that a nuclear reactor once sat. I guess there was some sort of accident and the reactor disappeared into the ground and a small lake formed in its place. I believe the accident was never covered in the news because a lot of government officials wanted to keep the place a secret because it was such a great site for catching delicious monster tadpoles. My dad use to catch fish in the reactor holding pond back before I was born. I’ve been told that’s why I was born with webbing between my toes and a set of functioning gills. My gills scare off a lot of girls every time they try to give me a hickey.

Now the location of this lake remains a secret to most but, if you happen upon it you will see the name is “Keep Out” lake or maybe lake “Keep Out”. I’m not sure which since the word “Lake” was left out of the name on the signs. The name is on a sign about every 20 feet on the ten foot high chain link fence that surrounds the lake. There is also a ring of barbed wire on top of the chain link fence so it would be very difficult to enter except that about 10 years ago a large tree fell across the backside of the fence and now you can walk right in. I disabled the barb wire so it won’t cut my tires when I drive over it.

On my last tadpole fishing trip I brought along a guy I work with named Gerrard. He’s an old guy (about 27) and he lives in his mom’s basement and raises rats for a living. The rat business he inherited when his dad disappeared. There was a lot of buzz around town that Gerrard’s old man was eaten by rats. I never asked Gerrard about his old man but I always think about being attacked by rats when I go into any basement. Of course the main reason I brought Gerrard along is that it takes two people to catch those really big whopper tadpoles. It also takes a tow truck and I happened to borrow one from my uncle Frank. I let him drive my girlfriends Jaguar for a day while I got the use of his tow truck so I could go fishing for monster tadpoles.

Now these monster tadpoles weigh from 200-800 lbs. My dad says he’s seen them lurking around in the mucky waters that were 20ft long and might of weighed 2-3 tons. That’s why just a fishing reel and plastic line won’t work on these tadpoles. If their sharp teeth don’t cut right through the line then they will simply run out the spool of line on your reel. The really big tadpoles are just about impossible to stop when they start to run because of their great weight and because they usually have little nubbins started for legs and arms. The nubbins give them a grip on the lake bottom.

Well, I backed the tow truck up to Keep Out Lake and released some slack in the wench. I had a tow hook already on the end of the chain and that was all I needed to catch a giant tadpole. Giant tadpoles don’t have to be actually hooked to reel them in. Giant tadpoles just kind of suck in the bait and then clamp their toothy jaws so firmly down that it would take ten sticks of dynamite to open them up again. Giant tadpoles love their food and once it is in their belly they will not let anyone have it or in this case, have it back. The bait we were using was a skunk I hit last week with about four pounds of bacon grease soaked into the fur. Even though for humans skunk smell really stinks, to some animals it is like a dinner bell. For example, skunk fur is used to make trout flies in the spring. Now the smell of bacon or pork makes every single plant and animal in the universe start to salivate. We have giant lizards in Michigan that live exclusively on pork.

Finally, Gerrard and I were all set to catch us a whopper of a tadpole. My dad and I used to go fishing for them when I was just a kid. One giant tadpole would feed my folks my brothers and me for most of the winter so; my dad always took our annual tadpole expedition very seriously. Once we had the bait tied securely with wire onto the chain just above the hook on the wench, we waded out about ten feet into the pond and tossed the bait out about another eight feet which was as far as Gerrard and I together could throw it. Then, Gerrard and I splashed around and around in the water to help draw a giant tadpole into our bait. I remembered when I was a kid my dad would have me swim out about 30-50 feet from shore and then splash around to draw the in the really big tadpoles. Then they would swarm in like piranhas. Of course just being a kid I could run like crazy to get away from the monsters. Now that I’m in my early twenties I think I might be slowing down too much to swim that far out into the lake and lure in the monsters.

So we were all set to catch a monster tadpole that day but, we did not imagine the size of the monster that we lured into the bait. About half way across the lake a giant creature broke the water and when it came down it was just a few yards away from where Gerrard and I were splashing around. Gerrard and I quickly ran from the lake and got into the tow truck. “Do you know what giant tadpoles turn into when they are mature?” asked Gerrard.

I gulped and responded “I’ve never seen them but, they must turn into giant frogs”.

No sooner had I said that and the monster frog had a hold of the skunk bait and had swallowed the entire chain all the way back to the boom on the back of the tow truck. I hit the gas but went nowhere. Gerrard and I each jumped out of the truck and started running back toward the main highway. I turned around for just a second and saw the giant frog swallow the rest of the tow truck. Luckily the tow truck must have filled the giant frog up because he did not pursue us.

Gerrard and I got away but I did lose my uncles tow truck. My uncle was upset until I offered to let him have the Jaguar. He was content with the deal and within a week he found a girlfriend and she consented to marry him. So, I ended up gaining a new aunt out of the experience even though I lost my girlfriends Jaguar. I didn’t mind. My girlfriend was so rich that it meant nothing to her and I liked driving her Trans Am a lot better anyway.