Fishing for the first time

So Jacob, my 4 year old son, has decided that he loves fishing. This is kind of funny to me, since he has never gone fishing before in his short life, nor has he ever seen anyone fishing to the best of my knowledge. Regardless, he would sit on the rocks in our back yard with a stick acting as a fishing pole and cast and bring in fish for what seemed like hours, using his imagination.

Our friends, the Salm’s heard about this, and bought him a fishing pole for his birthday and invited us to their house this past weekend to fish in their backyard pond. Now what I did not realize was that their pond actually is a tributary to a one of the local rivers and has some pretty good size fish. I assumed it was a small pond and would have Sunny’s or other small fish, not bass or catfish. Boy was I surprised.

So we show up around 4 pm on Sunday and move to the pond. We have 3 poles, for 4 kids, the Salm’s have Nathan (5) and Daniel and Elena (3). Mollie and the mothers watched from a few feet back and acted as a well-stoked peanut gallery, never leaving a well placed comment alone, providing guidance to us, and making sure no hooks wound up in the kids. So we begin and David casts for Nathan. Before long the bobber is running and they have a bite, they reel it in and they pull up a little sunny.

I am bummed, because I think this is the only fish in the proverbial sea and I am concerned that my boy is not going to experience the thrill of the catch, the exhilaration of bringing in the line with the fish flapping. But hey you gotta keep trying.

I then cast for Jacob and sure enough his bobber sinks and runs. I get him to reel it in; all the while I assume it is another sunny, boy was I wrong. He pulled up a good sized Bass. Since I am not a fisherman, I have no idea how big this was, I will let you all decide yourself based on this picture. I get it off the hook and throw him back, since there is no way the wives are going to permit us to eat that for dinner.














So then we cast again and got another bite. This time a catfish winds up on the end of the line shocking us all. We had no idea there would be a catfish in this water. Again, you can decide the size. Again, we threw it back.














Just to prove she was there, here is a picture of Mollie enjoying herself.

Within an hour, all the kids fishing caught something, though my boy did have the two largest catch of the day. We threw everything back, though a few fish swallowed the hook and went belly up after our encounter, but unfortunately we could not avoid it.

The kids then went to play while a great summer BBQ was prepared. When we went to visit the Salm’s last year, Jacob was bitten twice by a bee in their backyard. Sure enough, he got nailed again this year, while waiting to go down their slide. To be honest and fair, we are not sure he was actually bit by anything or just got his finger pinched on something. Either way, when we asked him if he wants to go fishing again, he said no since he hurt his finger.

Today, Jacob asked me when he could go fishing again at Daniel and Elena’s house. So I guess the hurt/bit finger is long since forgotten.