Gone fishin'

Bethany has been bugging me for probably a couple of years to take her fishing. Well, I finally caved in and took her and Meagan this morning.

I didn't have any gear at all anymore, so I pretty much had to start from scratch. I made up a list and had Dad look it over and then went and got everything. We got poles and pole rests and hooks, bubbles, spinners, powerbait and powerbait hooks. I thought I was all set. But it turns out I wasn't as prepared as I thought.

We got there and I got the girls' poles set up and cast out. Meagan's pole was a half-size child's pole. I tried it out at home before we went, but when we got there, it just didn't really work well at all. I couldn't get it to cast further than about eight feet. Then, I didn't have any sinkers, and the wind was blowing so strongly, that the bubbles were just blowing back to shore. We sat there while the people all around us were reeling in the fish, and we had no luck at all. The people next to us took pity on me and gave me two sinkers, so I redid the girls' poles and set them out again. Still no luck, but at least they weren't blowing all over anymore.

At one point we watched a large bird swoop down and pluck a fish out of the water. I'm not sure what it was--it was huge and brown with a lighter underbelly and head. The sad thing is that is was a better fisherman than us. But the girls had a lot of fun watching it carry off the fish. They decided its babies must be hungry for fish.

The people next to us caught their limit and were getting ready to leave. He asked me what bait I was using--Meagan had red and orange powerbait, and Bethany had a worm. He gave me some of what they were using--lime green powerbait balls. So I reset Bethany's pole and recast. Meagan's broke. It quit reeling in at all. I had to pull the line in by hand. So I used the sinker from her line and set up my pole. We still didn't have any luck. I thought I had something on mine, but the line snagged on something on the way in and broke. So I was down to one sinker. I asked some other people--who were reeling in tons of fish--what they were using. They had the same green balls, but had soaked them in this liquid fish attractant. A few minutes later he brought me some and I tried it out on Bethany's pole. Within 30 seconds we had a fish. Bethany was so exicted. We'd been there about an hour at that point, and she had been getting really anxious. She kept saying, "Oh, we're never going to get a fish!" Over, and over and over. It got really old. Then Meagan kept asking to go home.

When we finally got a fish, though, Bethany was happy. It had swallowed the hook, so there was some blood. For some reason, the girls seemed surprised at the blood. It had never occured to them that fish had blood.

A few minutes after we caught that fish, Bethany's line snagged in the same place mine had, and broke. So, we were down two sinkers and had no more cool bait, and so we left. We were only out for about an hour and a half, but the girls had fun. Bethany just had to call Nate on the way home and tell him all about her fish.



I cleaned the fish when we got home while the girls were in the tub--they'd gotten pretty dirty playing in the mud and stuff at the lake. Meagan thought we were bringing the fish home to put in Daddy's fishtank. Bethany asked to see her fish, and when she saw it in the fridge, all cut up, she started to cry. She got angry with me because I "broke" her fish. It pretty much took all afternoon to calm her down. But then she did a 180, and started asking to go fishing again, so we could get more for dinner. We had a few errands to run in the afternoon, so I got some of the liquid attractant and some sinkers, and returned Meagan's pole.

After dinner, I took just Bethany back to the lake. We caught two more fish pretty quickly. I like that attractant. Then I had problems with my pole. The line kept tangling, and winding up in the wrong place. It was weird. I'm deciding if I want to return it or not. I really like Bethany's. It's a push-button kind, but it casts really well.

But anyway, the fishing expedition was a success for the day. We got three rainbow trout, and Bethany was happy. She started asking when we were going fishing again, and didn't want to take "I don't know" for an answer. She started demanding that I show her on the calendar what day we'd go. Maybe I'll have to take her in the evening again sometime this week.