I'm sure this could have happened anywhere, it just ended up happening at Smitty's to me yesterday.
So I go in on the way to Bolivar to pick up some shrimp and squid. I was planning on doing some surf fishing at the Father-in-law's beach house. I tell the girl behind the counter that I want a pound of shrimp and a pound of squid. She goes back in the back to get my order ready. Over the counter I see her put one plastic bag in a white grocery bag, then another one, then she tied the grocery bag up and brought it to the counter. She rang me up and repeated "one pound of squid and one pound of large shrimp" and gave me the total. I paid her and got back in the truck to finish the run to Bolivar.
The first thing I noticed when I pulled onto the beach was the seaweed.... It was EVERYWHERE and THICK! I decided to try it anyway and that's when I noticed the first problem. Instead of the girl putting a bag of shrimp and a bag of squid in the grocery bag, she put a bag of shrimp and a bag of ice. No squid. I tried a few shrimp anyway but the seaweed was just too bad.
I decided to go to the north jetty and do some shrimp soaking since that was all that I had. When I got there, I unpacked everything and started fishing. I got to looking in the bag of shrimp and saw TONS of heads, small amounts of seaweed and small fish in the bag. I was already frustrated about being shorted my squid, but now this was too much. I dumped out the bag and checked out the contents. I found around 50% was actually shrimp and the rest was heads, seaweed and fish. I have been to places where I could see the bait being put in the bag and it is pretty noticable what you're picking up. Could she really have been blind enough or stupid enough to not notice the poor quality of shrimp that she was giving me and that she neglected to give me my squid at all or did she just not care? This is just as much a warning as a rant. For those like me that take the process for granted, this is just a warning. Most of these people aren't as interested in you getting decent quality bait as you are. For the rest of you, this is just a mindless rant.
Rant complete!
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