Fish tale, happy ending

Rewind 2008 Baltimore Sun reporters share their most memorable moments of the past year

Boy gets wedding ring. Boy loses wedding ring. Fishing buddy finds wedding ring. Happy ending.

In early August, a fisherman from Bowleys Quarters we'll call "Paul Shelton" and his new bride, "Meredith," joined another couple for drinks at Red Eye's Dock Bar, the longtime Kent Island establishment and home of the never-ending bikini contest. After enduring some friendly kidding about not being allowed to watch anymore, Paul jokingly took off his ring and then put it back on. Meredith asked what was so funny, so Paul showed her. And with that, a bar patron bumped his arm and the ring rolled across the deck, between two planks and into the water below.

Panicked, Paul carved an "X" in the deck where the ring disappeared and got on the Web site tidalfish.com to enlist diver and fellow angler Skip Zinck to search the bottom.

The dock's steel bolts rendered a metal detector useless,and Skip's vision was limited to about 10 inches. So Paul guided Skip by lowering a string between the boards at the spot where the ring disappeared.

For 40 minutes, Skip searched and found all kinds of nasty stuff, but no ring. Then, he spotted an oyster shell with what appeared to be an old beer pull tab in it. Except it wasn't a tab, it was the white-gold ring, none the worse for its briny bath.