re: Five day old bait left in ice chest.

A buddy of mine caught some really nice grouper years ago and, as is necessary with shallow water grouper, it is best to let them age on ice a little while...a couple days...firms 'em up. Deep grouper don't need this but if they are in 30 feet or less it really makes a difference unless its cold and then they probably ain't going to be in 30 foot or less. Anyway....he heads to the hill, ices the fish down, cleans the boat, and goes to the marina office to get the boat lifted and placed in storage. He goes to load the cooler and the boat guy tells him he put it on his truck for him and the boat was already put to bed. My buddy gets in the truck and goes home, parking his truck with the cooler in it the shop, 280 miles from the boat. 2 days later he opens to cooler....and it is empty except for ice and water and a few drinks etc...no grouper. Confused my buddy though someone had come to get the fish and had already filleted them and they would tell him later...no worries. This would have been Monday. Friday morning dude gets a call from the marina....something is bad wrong with the boat LOL....the guy had loaded the wrong cooler!!! The fish had been in dry storage in Stuart on the 5th level in August LOL....it was probably 130 degrees up there LOL....needless to say those fish were kind of ripe!

We go down Saturday to deal with it and I try to talk him into simply trashing the cooler...its a 120qt igloo marine cooler...he ain't having it LOL....we head off shore and dump that smelly mess and I swear withing 10 minutes there as a slick about a mile in diameter.....looked just like a feeding slick LOL....we drug the cooler for about 15 minutes and closed it and headed back to the hill and a couple of gallons of bleach later it was almost like new...but always stunk more than would be normal.....