A bomb squad in Denton, Texas, was called out to a public park on Lewisville Lake Monday after a local treasure hunter found a pipe bomb there in waist-deep water. Officials are still investigating, but they believe the bomb was placed there by someone attempting to blast fish.
Mike Reiter, the man who found the bomb, was using a metal detector and wearing chest waders to search the lake bottom around Lake Park for hidden treasures. He told local news outlets that he does this regularly in the public park, which has a disc golf course and a swim area where kids often play.
“I’ve found a lot of weird stuff. You know, guns and knives and hypodermic needles and razor blades — all sorts of stuff metal detecting. But a bomb?!” Reiter said in an interview with WFAA News. “Why the heck are there bombs in a park? So, yeah. Angry is an understatement.”
Reiter added that he’s been called stupid for picking up the pipe bomb, but that he couldn’t just leave it in the water for someone else to find. So, Reiter carried the device ashore and placed it on a rock. He then ran away from the water and called the Lewisville Police Department, which referred to the pipe bomb as a “suspicious package” in a Facebook post about the incident.
The LPD contacted the Denton Fire Department, which sent its bomb squad to the park. After confirming that it was a pipe bomb, they cordoned off the area and safely detonated the device, according to Capt. Hunter Lott, a public information officer with the Fire Department.
Someone with the DFD bomb squad reportedly told Fox 4 on Tuesday that they’d seen pipe bombs used for illegal fishing before, and they called it a growing trend. Capt. Lott, who is new to the role, tells Outdoor Life that this is the first such instance he’s aware of, but that “anecdotally, I know that’s a thing.” Lott was unable to provide additional details about the device or the type of explosives it might have contained.
“I am not a bomb technician, but from my understanding, it is not a normal practice to disassemble a device,” Lott says. “If they deem it a threat, and they determine that they want to dispose of it in a safe manner, they will blow it up.”
Read Next: Two Poachers Were Busted Using This Old-School Outlaw Technique to Shock Catfish
Lewisville Lake is one of the larger reservoirs in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, and Lake Park itself is located just 16 miles from the DFW International Airport. While it’s not known as a trophy bass lake — especially compared to other nearby waters like Lake Fork — Texas Parks and Wildlife rates Lewisville as an excellent fishery for catfish, crappies, and white bass.
Also known as dynamite or grenade fishing, the illegal practice of blast fishing involves the use of explosives to kill or stun a large amount of fish. This technique has been used by poachers the world over, and it goes all the way back to the invention of dynamite in the late 19th century.
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