I'll continue with the bucket brigade idea so ably started by Buddy. When I was in college, the school built a new pond. Several hundred guys eagerly asked what it would be stocked with. The answer was, "Nothing". We were disappointed. We were really disappointed. Some of the fellows decided to remediate this desperate oversight. Judging by the result, "some" might have been "dozens". The pond was only half an acre to an acre in size. It filled quickly enough and within a year there came a serious rain, about 6 inches one night. It is not to be surprised that the little pond, fed entirely by runoff, flooded. Dozens, even hundreds of fish washed out and died in the spillway. (The spillway was lined with rock and spread out as it went to cause the water to become more shallow and lose force. Judging by the stranded fish, it worked brilliantly.) There were catfish of several species, some over 10 pounds. There were bass, minnows, suckers, sunfish, and just about everything to be found in the area. School officials had a fit and spoke at some length about the irresponsibility of the student body. The student body pointed out, with considerable annoyance, that the school had no cause for complaint because they weren't going to put fish into the pond anyway. At this point, school officials sheepishly admitted that the pond had already been given an experimental stocking at night as part of some research. How the official stocking party didn't collide with at least one of the unofficial ones is unknown, unless it that the sentries used by the unofficial but energetic stocking parties. We suspect they operated during the normal sleeping hours of college students, ~ 8 AM.
The point (yes, there is a point) to this is that in a short period of time, hundreds of pounds of fish of many species appeared in a pond with no known witnesses. Four college guys in two pickups with several 30+ gallon plastic garbage cans in the beds, and a coed on the hill to keep watch and signal, can move a phenomenal quantity of fish in a single night. Or at least that's what I've been told...
Ed
P.S. Having the two co-eds in bathing suits on a beach blanket, even in the dark, pretty much guarantees that nobody notices a few guys with 5 gallon buckets hanging out near pickup trucks.
P.P.S. Harold Blaisdell has a great story about 12 little trout and a bucket in one of his books, The Philosophical Fisherman, I think.
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