Put a Hot Dog on Your Hook — Better Than Live Bait (Why Was It Banned?)

Dale had been standing knee-deep in the Wabash for maybe twenty minutes when his neighbor gave up and walked back to the bank. Two hours with nightcrawlers. Nothing. Dale reached into the cooler in his truck bed, pulled something out, cut it small, and threaded it onto his hook. The neighbor squinted. Plain. Pink. Smelled like a backyard cookout. Dale held it up — an Oscar Mayer hot dog, the cheap kind. By the time the fog lifted, he had three channel cats on the bank and his neighbor had nothing.