:usaflag: A Couple Of Curiosities

[Cupajo]

For over a month I have been finding these tiny (Maybe 1/4") mostly green plastic balls along the water-front.


I must have picked up hundreds by now and I can't seem to find a source or their purpose. They have begun to disappear and are fewer all the time, but an oddity for sure.

(The plastic bracelet is popular these days and sometimes those beads are found too, but they are drilled for stringing as a necklace or other jewelry.)

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They are solid plastic with no hole for "stringing " them on a cord.

The next item to show up has been this black plastic tube with an odd shape and so far I have picked up between 60 and 100 of them scattered along the beach.

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What their purpose is baffles me and how they got in the water is a mystery too.

These beads are used on fishing rigs for bottom fishing and when I pick up mono-filament fishing line they are sometimes attached. As you can see I have picked up a lot of mono as this is only from 8-10 months of beach combing!

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Thanks for your time and any insights into the mystery,

CJ

 

[Royal]

second looks like some kind of wadding to me. I have seen it before but can not place them

 

[Wayne in BC]

it sits under the charge. They used to use cardboard but now use plastic. Those seem longer than usual and could be 3-1/2 inch magnum
If a 10 gauge the diameter should be .775 inch if a 12, diameter would be .730 approx.

 

[Cupajo]

I thought it kinda odd that these things would show up in such numbers vertually over night when I hadn't seen them before. It may have had something with the flood waters pouring down the river too I suppose.

Lots of trash ended up on the beach from the flood waters.

CJ

 

[nova74]

Those small green pellets look like an Air soft BB ammo. Seems to be the right size I'm no expert thou. This could explain why they just show up over nite perhaps.

 

[Kelley (Texas)]

in the toy air guns that kids play with now days. A few years ago, most of the kids on our street had those toy air guns and one day a battle erupted in our front yard and progressed across the street into John's yard. John came running out of his house, yelling at the boys to go somewhere else because he did not want those plastic pellets in his flower beds. As he turned around to go back into his house, one of the boys shot him in the back...big mistake! I was standing on my front porch watching the entire thing unfold, laughing my head off. John was really pizzed off and was demanding to know which boy shot him in the back. One of the boys, the one hiding behind a car parked on the street yelled that Eric was the one that shot him. Eric was hiding behind John's car parked in his driveway and upon hearing that he had been named as the one who had shot John in the back, decided to make a run for the safety of his house which was next door to us on the right side. Eric barely made it through his front door, maybe three or four steps ahead of John. John started banging on the front door and Eric's mother came outside to see what all the commotion was about. When asked if he had shot John with the pellet gun, Eric said that he was not the one that did it. Eric's mother chewed John out for picking on her boy and told him to leave her yard. That was the end of it and John went home, but swearing that as far as he was concerned, he would get even with Eric for what he had done. I had been laughing so hard that my sides hurt. I motioned to the boys, must have been around ten or so boys, that I wanted to see those pellet guns. They showed them to me...made out of plastic, but with a metal barrel. Sam let me shoot his gun and I was surprised at how accurate it was...shot Debbie's flower pot on the front porch several times and it was hard hitting. The pellets those boys were shooting were green and yellow colored and looked similar to the ones in your picture. Kelley (Texas)

 

[Cupajo]

Hi Fred,

Thanks for the info Friend! You could be on to something there, but for them to just wash ashore, over a large area of beach all at once is a curious thing.

They don't seem to be all that "Bio-degradable" either as they are soaked in salt water and sun-shine and don't appear any the worse for wear.

I'll look for them at the local sports shops.

That is a funny story about the pellet gun though. Thanks, I needed that!!

Regards,

CJ

 

[Kelley (Texas)]

n/t

 

[Cupajo]

Thanks Nova 74 and Fred for pointing out my oversight!!

I quickly scanned the replies and missed the author completely!!

I hate it when I have to rush through my day.

Things like this happen!

My apologies and thanks for your replies Friends!!

CJ

 

[Micheal_R]

n/t

 

[Bayrat76]

Kinda like a Rattle trap fishing lure, we buy a float thats a popping cork with S.S. leader with theses red beads on them, or put them on are Red Fish leaders when fishing with plastic Shrimp tails.

 

[Cupajo]

Hi BR,

Thanks for your reply.

All the brite colored balls except the green ones I removed from fishing lines washed onto the local swimming beach (Some complete with fish hooks!!).

The green ones are solid and have no hole for stringing on a line. Based on the above replies they may be a type of BB shot from a toy gun. The unanswered mystery is likely never to be known and that is how they and the other plastic things suddenly appeared in such numbers along this stretch of beach.

As part of my "safe beach beautification project" I haul them all away anyway, along with planks with rusty nails, broken glass and syringes, etc. that wash ashore.

Regards,

CJ

 

[Bayrat76]

I saw a lot of different things people have used in salt water when fishing plastics baits. I took a green laser light pointer that drivers use and tied it to a pvc pipe one night and went to Baffin bay bad lands, which is a place you don't want to be at night in the first place because all the rocks down there. Well it didn't work like I thought it would shining it on some of the under water Big rocks were those 10 pound plus speck trout live. It was a waste of about 120.00 dollars and a night to remember getting out of there with a lower unit. But I tried it I can say. I think that green laser in the water scared the crap out of the fish. I didn't even get bait fish coming to it. I think it would go 500 feet in the water and 2000 yards on land. It would leave green trail the whole way even on land. It sure scared the crap out of the birds at work, in the night time.

 

[Cupajo]

You may be right BR, but whatever they are used for they are showing up less and less on the beach. I only found one when I went out last.