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Most bass fishermen hate winter, but that's when the Swamp Gas Corners Bass Club holds one of our biggest events of the year, the annual Frostbite Tournament! This event has, pardon the pun, snowballed into one of our biggest tournaments of the year, complete with a big cash pot and a tacky trophy that any redneck basser would be proud to display!

The trash talk was flyin' hot 'n' heavy at the January meeting prior to the tournament. "Hey Harry, is you gonna weigh in a fish this year?" Wilbur Wangle, my bassin' buddy's archrival, chided. "If memory serves me right, you ain't caught a fish in the last three Frostbite Tournaments!"

"Well, things is gonna be different this year!" Harry grumbled. "I aims to win the points championship this year, and I might as well start by coppin' the Frostbite trophy with a big ol' lunker!"

"Har-har, that's rich!" Wilbur guffawed. "The biggest bass anybody's ever caught in a Frostbite Tournament barely weighed 3 pounds! This event ain't about catchin' lunkers, it's about survival of the fittest!" Wilbur was right about that — we always got the worst weather of the year during the Frostbite Tournament. And according to the weather forecast, 2009 would be no different.

"Boys, the weatherman says a monster cold front is gonna blow in startin' late tonight," Dead-Eye Dingle, our tournament director, said gravely. "It's supposed to get down to 10 degrees Friday night, with a high of 28 on Saturday. Now, some of y'all have been askin' me to move the tournament to another weekend, but nasty weather is what the Frostbite Tournament is all about! So y'all get yer long johns out and show up at Dink's Dock at 6 a.m. sharp Saturday to register! Dink's old lady said she'd have sausage 'n' biscuits and a big jug of coffee waitin' on us. We'll blast off at 7 and weigh in at 3. Any questions?"

"If it gets down to 10 degrees Friday night like they's sayin', them basses' mouths will clamp shut tighter than the front gate to Fort Knox!" I groaned as we drove home after the meeting. "How in blazes is you gonna keep warm?" The cold never bothered me that much 'cause of the 40 extra pounds of insulation on my frame, but poor Harry was so skinny, he could walk through a picket fence!

"Don't breathe a word of this to nobody, but I've shivered my last shiver during a Frostbite Tournyment!" Harry winked. "I done bought me an electric snowmobile suit!"

"A what!?" I asked. "Why, I ain't never heard of such a thing!"

"Yep, they're the latest rage among them snowmobile nuts up north," he allowed. "It's like a regular insulated jumpsuit, only with wires runnin' through it like a 'lectric blanket has! When you plug it into a battery, the wires heat up and, before you know it, you're enveloped in toasty warmth!"

"I dunno," I replied skeptically. "Seems to me that wearin' an electric suit around water could be dangerous!"

"Danger, schmanger!" Harry pooh-poohed. "While Wilbur and all them other rednecks is out there freezin' to death, I'll be warm as toast and swingin' them great ol' big 'uns aboard!"

When we showed up at Dink's Dock Saturday mornin', the thermometer by the cricket cage read a frigid 10 degrees! "Hurry, help me into this 'lectric suit before anybody sees me put it on!" Harry insisted. He stripped down to his skivvies and slid into the jumpsuit just as Lefty Lepieux pulled up alongside us in his pickup truck. "Mon Dieu, look! The Bayou, she done froze over!" the crazy Cajun basser sputtered. "We all gonna freeze out there!"

"We should urge Dead-Eye to reconsider moving the Frostbite Tournament to a later date!" Mouse Mozzarella chimed in.

"Like July, maybe?" Harry said sarcastically. "What's the matter with you pansies, anyway? Can't you take a little cold weather? I thought bass fishin' was supposed to be a manly sport, but y'all is just a bunch of whinin' sissies! Right, Wilbur?"

"Yeah, I guess," Wilbur replied weakly, rubbin' his frozen hands together and shiverin' uncontrollably. He was sufferin' from the cold just as bad as the rest of the motley crew.

We paid our registration fee and Harry downed a half dozen sausage biscuits and a gallon of black coffee. "Let's hurry up and get the boat in the water so's I can plug this dang suit up to the battery!" he insisted. "I'm gettin' cold!" We slid Ol' Stump Jumper, our trusty johnboat, onto the ice-covered Bayou, climbed aboard and used our scullin' paddles to bust through the thin layer of ice and paddle out to open water. Harry reached into his jumpsuit's pocket and pulled out two long wires: "Q-q-quick, attach these alligator clips to the b-b-battery before I f-f-freeze solid!" I did, and within seconds, Harry exclaimed, "Yeah, baby! She's a-heatin' up, all right! I'm as toasty warm as if I was sittin' in front of a cracklin' fireplace!"

The rest of the bass clubbers launched their rigs and lined up for blastoff. They was all hunkered down in their boats and wrapped up in blankets, stockin' caps and whatever else they could scrounge together to stave off the brutal cold. Crusty Popodopolous pulled up next to us in his superfast Hydro-Blaster with his fishin' partner Wilbur hunkered up next to him, wrapped up like one of them Egyptian mummies. "Hey Crusty, Wilbur told me he didn't think that rig of yours would run over 80!" Harry hollered over the chugging 475-horse outboard. "Why don't you show him how fast it'll go?"

"No! Please don't!" Wilbur pleaded. But it was too late! Dead-Eye fired the official starting gun, Crusty stomped the foot throttle, and VROOOOMMMM! His bass rig shot across the frigid lake like a Scud missile!

"That was a mean trick!" I allowed as we putted out to a nearby stump flat.

"Yeah, but it serves that polecat Wilbur right," Harry replied. "Let him freeze solid, I say! He ain't man enough to win the Frostbite Tournament!"

The first sign of trouble came about three hours later. "Charlie, I got a slight problem," Harry groaned. "Them sausage biscuits I ate is fixin' to pass through me like a dose of salts through a goose!"

"I'll run you up to shore, then you get out and go back into the woods to answer nature's call," I suggested. "You won't have to worry about steppin' on a cottonmouth in weather this cold!"

"Uh, normally that'd work, but I cain't get the dang zipper on this electric suit open!" he replied through clenched teeth. He tugged and tugged at the zipper, but it wouldn't budge.

"Hmmm, then I reckon you has got two options," I surmised. "Your first option is 'hold it,' and you don't wanna know what the second option is!"

Harry chose option No. 1. But his zipper problem was just the tip of the iceberg. The north wind was howlin', and icy spray had turned the floor of the boat slick as glass. Even my natural insulation wasn't enough to keep me warm that day! With less than 30 minutes left to fish, neither of us had gotten the first bite. The only thing that had gone right was that Harry's electric suit was keepin' him snug as a bug in a rug.

Harry cast his spinnerbait to a big sunken tree, slow rolled it down the trunk, and suddenly his rod doubled over under the weight of a humongous bass! "I got one!" he sputtered as the monster surged for deeper water. His line began to cut upward, then the enormous bass rolled on top. "Great sufferin' bilge pumps!" he gasped. "It's a 15-pounder!"

Thankfully the lunker was nearly as slow-movin' as I was in that cold water. It finned sluggishly near the surface as I eased the boat closer with the scullin' paddle. Finally Harry reached out and put a two-handed lip lock on his prize! "Yahoo!" he shouted, rasslin' it aboard. "What a fish!" That's when it happened: He stood up in the ice-covered boat, his feet slipped out from under him and over the side he went!

ZZZZZTTTTTT!! When Harry hit the water, his electric suit sent 40,000 volts surgin' through his nervous system before shorting out in a thick cloud of smoke! "Harry!" I pleaded as I pulled him aboard. "Speak to me! Is you OK?"

"Heck no, I ain't OK!" he replied dizzily, coughin' up a minner. "I done had the biggest bass in the Bayou in my grip, then lost it. I'm soaked clear through and freezin' to death. But worst of all, that 'lectric shock that just jolted me triggered Option Two!"

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