![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/boom.png?resize=458%2C205&ssl=1\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nPaul Johnson and two other fishermen, JoJo and Dylan Groene, said they didn\u2019t believe it was a bomb at first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI kicked it up to see what it was and my head broke the surface. I said, \u201cHey man, I found a bomb,\u201d said Johnson. \u201cObviously, they didn’t think I found a bomb so another one of my coworkers helped me pick it up; he picked it up a little bit and then dropped it when he realized what it was. We didn’t know if it was a real bomb or not.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Johnson and the Groene\u2019s were able to lift the 100-pound bomb onto their fisherman boats and drive it to the dock, where they immediately called the Polk County Sheriff\u2019s office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cA lot of sheriff cars showed up, almost immediately,\u201d said JoJo Greone. \u201cI put everything on my Tik Tok, it was crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Polk County Sheriff\u2019s Office stayed overnight with the bomb until MacDill technicians could arrive. This is the statement they provided about what these fishermen found: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
“EOD with MacDill AFB responded at 0530 hours to evaluate and remove the device. After a review, the EOD technicians determined the device was a M38A2 100 LBS practice bomb<\/strong>. According to the EOD technicians, the device contained no explosives and was safe to move. EOD technicians removed the device from the water, took possession of it and transported it back to MacDill. The practice bomb was a WWII era device with an operational use from 1931 to 1951.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The fishermen said they are honored to have stumbled across a piece of history, adding that it gives them a larger sense of pride for Polk County. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019m a collector of antiques and stuff,\u201d said Groene. \u201cMy dad got me into collecting stuff. His house is just full of stuff that probably has zero value to the average person, but to people like us it has sentimental value. We found it in our home lake.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Other Lake Hancock fishermen have reported finding unique items like vintage jugs, bull shark teeth and centuries-old canoes used by Native Americans. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cWe\u2019re out here every day before sunrise,\u201d said Paul Johnson. \u201cI\u2019m usually the first one in the water; I kicked the bomb with my foot, as I was walking by… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11552,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[12,14],"tags":[403],"class_list":["post-11551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","category-news","tag-world-war-ii-practice-bomb"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11551"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11551\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}