I happen to be fortunate enough that my in-laws have a cottage on a lake about 30 minutes from our house so I am able to do quite a bit of fishing. Out of all of the times I go fishing I would say that ninety five percent of the time I have at least one of my kids with me. It was one of those times that I was fishing with one of my kids that was the best time of the years fishing this past summer.
It was actually last Labor Day weekend. My family and I were at the cottage and we were spending the night there Sunday night. My kids had been out swimming all day and it was now about 7:00 at night and my kids wanted to go fishing. Well normally I would take them out on the pontoon boat but the battery was dead. I found that out the hard way when I got stranded out on the lake earlier in the day. So we were just going to fish off of the docks. My boys are 8 and 10 so I don't have to help them much now when we go fishing other maybe helping them tie on some of their baits. So they had me tie on a bait for them and went off on their own to fish off of some of the docks.
So that left just my daughter Katherine, who is 4, and myself. I had just bought her a new full size fishing pole and she had been bugging me from the time I bought it to take her fishing so there was no way that she was going to let me not take her fishing. So Katherine and I walked to the end of one of the docks and sat down together. I knew that there were a bunch of small bluegills right off the end of that dock and I was hoping that there might also be some big ones in there also. I tied on a small bare hook and put on a bobber about 18 inches up from it. I then put on a small chunk of worm and helped her cast out her new rod. The bobber had no sooner hit the water and the bobber started bobbing with the fish biting at the worm. She kept trying to real the bobber in when it would start bobbing and I told her to wait until it went under the water and the jerk the rod up real quick and then real in. Well she waited until it went under the water and jerked up on the rod and hit me in head the with it. She looked at me said, "I'm sorry daddy are you alright?" I laughed and said yes I am. Then we realized that she did actually still have a fish on the line so I told her to reel it in. Katherine reeled it in until the bobber hit the pole and I reached over and took the bluegill off of the line. She was jumping up and down on the dock and asked, "Can we keep it and eat it?" I told her, "No honey we can't keep this one because it is too small." So she asked me if she could touch it before I let it go. Well of course I said yes. She petted it and then I threw it back in the water to grow up.
We sat there together for about an hour catching small bluegill after small bluegill. To her they were trophies and to me it was memories that I will never forget. I love taking my 3 kids fishing and it seems like no matter where we go there is always something interesting that happens.
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