Sunday, June 8, 2008

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.

4 comments:

  1. What a fantastic day! Love the pictures!! Jonah will remember it forever. So will you.

    I spent my whole childhood with a rod in my hand (it was Minnesota after all) but NO fish on a hook. My uncles and cousins brought home bucket loads, but us? Zip. Always. One time Dad was out fly fishing for trout and I stayed in camp and decided to fish off the shore of the lake. I caught -by myself now- a HUGE funny looking fish with giant lips. I was ECSTATIC! I caught a FISH! Myself! I couldn't wait to tell Dad! When he finally came back with his usual empty creel, I proudly showed him my fish. "Aww...that's just a sucker. No good. Why'd you keep it anyway?" Deflated my whole summer. And remember it to this day.

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  2. Awesome, high quality blog posts these days. And Front Loader caught his own fish, in yo face mom and dad!

    And moms comment- that sounds just like something grandpa would say... don't get too proud of yoself.

    Classic photos of Jonah and Nathan too, good father/son shot for the ages

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  3. Yeah, one time while fishing with Grandpa when I was little (in the ponds out in the mounds?), I was the only one to catch a fish. I was so excited, but Grandpa said "Nah, it's just a sunfish. Throw it back!" And he took it off my line and tossed it in. Around here, if you catch a sunfish, you take it home and fry it up.

    Yeah, Kris, I was thinking I need to send some digitals in for prints so I'll have some of these for the albums...

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  4. I remember fishin with grandpa Mix in the mounds and he was pretty unsympathetic to the whining going on by me and Seth. For the record, it was raining and gnarly. But yeah, he was a tough one. The man for sure. Be good subject for a blog post one day...

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