Call them fearless. Call them doofuses. Just don’t call them hungry — and definitely don’t call them landlocked.
Cletus “Crusher” Cattailes and “Big Bag” Brian James — legends of the Thursday night church bass league in their home waters of Polk County — had exactly one goal: catch giant American red snapper in the Gulf of America before the season closed. The fact that they owned only a bass boat — a low, flat rig built for calm freshwater lakes and decidedly not the open ocean — was not going to stop them.
They are not, for the record, total idiots: they waited for a weather window of two feet or less. Then, loaded with caffeine, an economy-sized supply of Zyns, and two auxiliary bladders holding 150 gallons of gas, the pair launched from Bradentucky at 3 a.m. In a dead-slick calm, running wide open the entire way, they covered the 180 miles in just over two hours, trailing a rooster tail reportedly visible from Mexico.
By sunrise — powered by 15 pounds of frozen sardines, four dozen prime pinfish, and roughly equal parts adrenaline and nicotine — they had rods bent.
Asked why, they offered the only explanation that made sense to them.
“Why not? If you ain’t first, you’re last,” Crusher said, quoting his personal hero, Ricky Bobby — a man who, like the two of them, happens to have two first names.
At one point a passing oil tanker radioed down to confirm the tiny bass boat was not in distress. The reply, crackling back over the VHF, was simply: “Boogity, boogity, boogity.”
They ended the day with limits of red snapper to 27 pounds, yellowtail snapper to 8 pounds, and one unidentified snapper unlike anything in their home lakes — which they kept anyway, on the grounds that you only live once. They also filleted and released a few grouper, entirely unaware of the regulations.
A pair of officers was waiting at the ramp — the tanker’s operator, who did not speak English, had misheard “boogity, boogity, boogity” as a distress call and radioed for help.
But they were far more impressed with the feat than concerned with the fillets, and asked for autographs.
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