When he had heart surgery, he asked the doctor if he could see the piece of heart they took out, and the doctor brought it to him in a jar. He took one look at it and said "I'm taking that with me." He actually did use it to catch a catfish. He told me this himself and he also told me quite a few other stories that really make you shake your head.
He went on an african safari and he said he "happened" to have a turkey diaghram call with him so he put it in his mouth when he was sitting around an evening campfire with a bunch of hunters and native trakcers. He would stick his finger in his ear, then yelp on the call as he twisted it. By the end of the hunt the natives all thought he was some sort of witch doctor or something.
He was quite a character. He did author a book on deer hunting but his true specialty was fishing northwest Iowa Rivers. He had them dialed in. His claim to fame was that Doug Stange put him on the map. Doug was a high school english teacher in Sibley, where Toad lived, and they were fishing buddies. Doug got hired as the editor of Infisherman magazine in the early days when Al and Ron Lindner were just getting it up and running. Doug would always write about some weird experience with Toad which made him pretty well known. Last I knew Toad's daughter still had a few copies of his deer hunting book.