Live Bait

Live Bait is a short story in More & More Tales to Give You Goosebumps.

Plot
Timmy hates fish. Timmy is on vacation at the lake and another boy named Duke picks up a dead fish, plucks out its eyeball and sticks it in his mouth.

Duke goads Timmy into going fishing by basically daring him, which I guess enables anyone to overcome anything. If anyone reading needs to quit smoking, I dare you to stop. Unfortunately, all of the boats available for rent at the dock are rented. Duke and Timmy try to tell Mr. Roeper that it's okay for them to share a boat with two girls because they're both homosexuals, but he bugs out his eyes and they start getting flashbacks to that horrible horrible fish eye scene that was horrible. Finally they spot a little dinghy at the end of the dock and a shack with a weathered sign advertising for sale the titular line, 'The Haunted Guitar.'

Inside the shack, an old man tells the boys that if they promise to give him their biggest catch, they can rent the boat and have some bait for free. The boys are apparently unaware of the old saying that there's no such thing as a free lunch, and soon find themselves lunch for a huge monster fish. Who lives in a populated lake. Who is big enough to swallow them Jonah-style. Who then is killed by the old man. The monster spits the kids up and the old man thanks them for helping him catch the monster. He then wraps Duke and Timmy up in a net and dumps them into a jar marked 'Live Bait.'