If you're interested

For more information or to try tube-float fishing contact:

Acme Dam Fishing, 724-547-0363, info@acmedamfishing.com

For more details visit www.acmedamfishing.comWhen does a 2-foot snapping turtle get your undivided attention? When your hindquarters are slung in a nylon pouch, legs dangling in the reptile's home habitat.

	If you're interested For more information or to try tube-float fishing contact: Acme Dam Fishing, 724-547-0363, info@acmedamfishing.com For more details visit www.acmedamfishing.com

It's all part of the lure of float-tube fishing. It would be called "close encounter" angling if a movie about space aliens hadn't snagged the name first.

But water snakes, beavers and meat-eating turtles aren't the only creatures you encounter up close in a tube. Bill Lessman, owner and chief guide for Acme Dam Fishing, which specializes in guided tube angling for lubbers unaccustomed to kicking along in frog fins, can put a snaggletoothed, citation-size northern pike in your lap most any day on the water.

That the pike will be thrashing and flailing at whispering distance, at the end of a steel leader with a jaw full of surface lure only adds the kind of pulse-revving excitement Lessman likes to see his clients enjoy.

Or is it endure?

"This is aggressive, hands-on fishing. No waiting around for the fish to come to us. We go to the fish, hunt them down and catch them," promises Acme Dam's Web site. You can tell Lessman wrote the site's copy -- he speaks the same way on the water.

"What I like about float-tube fishing are the extremes," Lessman said. "One minute you are floating along relaxed, lost in the quiet, the next minute you've got an uncooperative pike in your face."

Lessman has fished all his life. He grew up along the shores of Bridgeport Dam on the boarder between Fayette and Westmoreland counties and made the most of the aquatic opportunity.

"When other kids were playing ball, I was fishing," he said. "I got to where I wanted to be right out there among the fish."

And so he is. Float-tube fishing gets you into places you could never wade or even reach in a boat.

Two years ago, Bill and his wife Lynn turned his angling passion into a business with the launch of Acme Dam Fishing, named for a mountain lake that Lessman avoids now because the Westmoreland County model airplane club recently began flying amphibious planes there.

"Who needs the noise?" he asked. "We've got plenty of options."

Acme Dam guides clients to a half-dozen other lakes around the Laurel Highlands, primarily for pike and bass in season, but also for trout and panfish if guests prefer.

Lessman guided me for pike on a mountain lake last week. It's the kind of place that makes you wonder why it took the English language so long to birth the word "biodiversity." It's a shallow, sun-warmed stew of weeds and algae, seasoned with rotting stumps and snags. In most places you can touch -- or should I say stir? -- the mired bottom with your swim fins.

The air smells organic and there is always something splashing, slurping, swirling or slithering a few feet away. Ospreys wheel and scream overhead and freshwater mussels filter a living from the muck. Bass and pike sulk in the narrow layer of tea-stained water.

On the job, Lessman was attentive and tactfully instructive, demonstrating how to hold the tube around my knees while I waded deep enough to sit down in the sling. Dutifully, he strapped on my fins while I sat, feet extended from under the tube like a kid in a shoe store the week before school.

Inflatable float tubes come in several styles: horseshoe shaped U-boats, round tubes that provide a place in front to rest weary arms and pontoon tubes, considered the Cadillac of float tubes. Prices run $50 to $300.

More than simple inner tubes, most float tubes are built with multiple air compartments to reduce the chance of sinking.

Lessman said the tubes are made for flat water only -- there's a possibility of flipping in creeks or rivers. He preached safety constantly, checking my PFD and explaining that his recently patented Citation fishing-accessory system provides another flotation fail-safe.

"The insurance company loves that thing," Lessman said.

His invention is a panel board platform suspended over two lengths of closed PVC pipe. It functions as a floating work surface, live-well and rod caddy.

Lessman hooks the Citation to the side of a tube and it's dragged alongside, sort of like a Monongahela riverboat with a coal barge in tow. He's searching for a manufacturer and hopes to market it.

After using it, it's hard to imagine how you could manage all the equipment, and the fish, without it.

Despite Lessman's cautions, I failed to pull my chest waders up to their maximum height in the back and to snug them tight. So, when I reared back to set the hook into a hungry northern, water poured down between my shoulder blades.

Lesson learned. Once you are bobbing in a float tube, it's too late to make adjustments in your watertight attire. The pike kept slashing at the lure and I kept striking back, inviting more of the lake inside my waders.

When a chilled wind kicked up in late afternoon, my chattering teeth reminded that hypothermia has been known to fell the unprepared and overconfident in relatively mild weather.

Lessman led me on a beeline to shore where we could stand up. He produced a Duofold underwear shirt from somewhere within the Citation's cargo hold, told me to put it on and I fished in comfort throughout the evening.

Any discomfort was my own doing. Lessman couldn't guarantee that I wouldn't get myself wet and cold, only that the trip would be safe and he'd put us on fish, which he did.

Our landing also offered a chance to ease urgent personal needs. Unlike other outdoor pursuits, a rule of float-tubing while wearing waders is: Don't drink plenty of fluids before fishing.

Lessman promotes fisheries conservation along with float-tubing. He fishes only artificial lures and participates in the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission's Catch-and-Release Citation Awards Program. Acme Dam Fishing is registered as an official fishing guide and charter boat service.