This might be one of the weakest excuses I've heard in awhile, but it's definitely a new one.

The Minnesota DNR offers weekly conservation officer reports from each region around the state. Many of these reports are pretty dry. Often just detailing interactions with people fishing/hunting/on the trails, trail or ice conditions updates, or occasional information about hunting and fishing infractions. This one definitely stood out from the pack.

In the St. Cloud area report for the beginning of February 2021, Minnesota DNR conservation officer Keith Bertram reported an angler using too many lines on a Long Prairie area lake. The reason for having too many lines in the water is wild.

For those of you unfamiliar, licensed anglers in Minnesota are allowed to have two lines in the water while ice fishing (that changes to only one line during open-water season, unless you're on Lake Superior, the Mississippi River, or other border waters).

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So, this guy had more than two lines in the water, and when Officer Bertram asked why, he explained that he was "switching lines, and never pulled up the first two." What led to this absent-minded mistake? Here's the quote from the DNR report Officer Bertram filed:

His excuse was he became distracted trying to find a date using Match.com on his phone.

What?

First off, this guy clearly isn't taking the fishing too seriously if he's crushing a dating website so hard he forgot about lines in the water. I don't know if this guy was in a fish house or out on the open ice, but I could think of potentially warmer and more comfortable places to swipe than on the ice. Why go through the effort of hitting the ice, drilling holes, (potentially setting up a fish house - that note is unclear), and dropping multiple lines, all just to stare at your phone?

Second, I have a fair amount of female friends that tell tales of how the stereotypical guy photo on dating apps and websites is "guy holding fish". It kind of makes me wonder if part of his game plan was to catch a fish to then hold in a photo to put on said dating website he was using while fishing. Based on the stories I hear, the odds of that being in this dude's mind are pretty high.

The DNR report doesn't say whether this guy was given any sort of formal citation.

From one fisherman to another; don't swipe and fish, bro. Enjoy your time out in the great outdoors, and focus on the task at hand. You clearly can't multitask if you forgot you had extra lines in the water. Had Officer Bertram not rolled around to bust you, I see the alternate ending to this story being "guy loses phone in lake as he drops it chasing after fishing rod plunging toward ice hole after fish bites line."

Tight lines, and good luck finding a date, fella.

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