Free Fishing Day

Today, across the whole state, people were out fishing without licenses. It's free-fishing weekend, and we decided to take advantage of it. Jonah has been begging to go fishing. "I wanna catch a fish! Can we catch a fish today?" is what we hear daily.



We quickly figured out that casting for him and then handing him the pole was not very much fun for him. So Nathan put some inedible plastic bait on a hook and just let him dip it in the water right off the shore where he could see all the little fish nibble at it.




And oddly enough, within five minutes of our arrival at the rearing-ponds he actually did catch a fish! All by himself, when we weren't even looking. He was ecstatic! It was a small bass, so we had to release it as you can only keep them over a certain size. But it was sure fun while it lasted!




The novelty soon wore off as we proceeded to catch nothing for the rest of the day. Isn't that funny? Jonah caught one by himself without even trying, but then Nathan and I could catch absolutely nothing no matter how hard we tried.

And it's really pathetic. We would not make good survivalists. We never catch anything. Morrell hunting? Nothing. Wild leek looking? Nothing. Deer hunting? Always nothing. Perhaps I am definitely my Grandfather's grand-daughter (he was notorious for loving the hunt but never getting a darned thing).

Foraging: ur doin it rong.

Anyway, back to my story.

After ten minutes, a major thunderstorm blew in. We got into the truck and decided to go someplace for ice cream to wait out the storm. We drove to Arby's to split a Jamoca shake (classy, I know. It was fun, though). It was a nasty storm, but blew through quickly and when it started to lighten we headed to the dump to load some firewood. Jonah helped, of course. He referred to himself in the third person by the name of Front Loader.





The storm passed and left gorgeous evening sun. We went back to the rearing ponds for more fishing (and the whole not-catching-anything part). This beautiful family swam by to say "hi".





Eventually we tired of not catching anything (it wasn't just us, we talked to others with the same problem. That made me feel better, even though I was bummed about not bringing home supper.) so we loaded up to go to a nearby lake with the intent of fishing more, but ended up swimming instead.




And this is the part where Jonah went out too far and lost his footing and tried to be a fish. But Daddy was fast and quickly put a stop to that before he actually inhaled water. And Daddy's boots got soaked.

And when we got home, Jonah sweetly thanked Daddy for taking him fishing.