Great twist on the on the cliched fish story about the big one that got away. Howard should have turned tail and run when he was handed the flare gun, so the old Woman might give him a BS story about  a storm up north maybe causing some flooding down here. Also, the story revolved around the people, rather than the creature. The old woman and the two men are so cocksure they’ll get Bess in the end, maybe Bess should pay them a visit in the last scene.

I liked this one.  It's a quick and easy read.  Meets the creature feature part as well as the parameters.  My favourite so far out the of the few I've read.

All the best.

Well for me this doesn't work, sorry to say.

And I think it's because it started with Howard and totally changed the direction and became about the creature and the two men.
And I thought Howard just came to fish, not for the creature. Did he?
I wish it had more of a story. Howard has this aim to achieve...he comes for the creature or something, lies to someone or something... I mean more of central character/aim/getting to it combination.

Might be just me.

Well written but there isn't really a story here. Guy goes fishing, guy gets eaten by fish, the end. It's the sort of story that is easily forgotten. I could watch it again next year and not remember it.

First, thanks to everyone for the great notes.

Several people seemed to have missed the twist: he's the bait. I considered making it less subtle, but ultimately decided not to make that change.

I did take another pass at the script and made several of the changes mentioned by others: smoothed out the intro, eliminated the overlap of the opening slug/description, changed the ending dialogue to reflect that this is an on-going struggle. "We finally hooked her." Idea is that they've never gotten this close before, so they're happy with the progress made.

Also, I realized that the piece would be stronger as a whole if I had Howard and the Woman have a quick exchange about bait in the beginning. So, I added a very brief exchange: "Anything biting today?" "With the right bait, it is."

That was an obvious exchange that I should have included in the original. If only I had thought of it sooner.

Again, thanks to all!

Congrats on the writer's choice.

It was a fine script.

Quoted from Scar Tissue Films Congrats on the writer's choice. It was a fine script.

Thank you so much. I enjoyed your script as well!

Congrats, Paul.

You're a damn good writer. Hope it gets picked up by Hyper Epics.

Congrats Paul you had my pick in the top 2

Well done Paul, this was in my top 2 as well and it sounds like you've nailed it with the re-write.

Quoted from PKCardinal Several people seemed to have missed the twist: he's the bait. I considered making it less subtle, but ultimately decided not to make that change.

I'm glad you didn't make that change. Any less subtle and it would have started to be insulting to the reader.

Well done, I really enjoyed this story