First Time Fishing

Today I took the kids fishing at Brookside Pond.  It’s on the grounds of the elementary school that Evelyn will attend next year.  The kids got fishing poles from the Easter Bunny and they were excited to try them out.  As Pat was leaving for work, I told him that I planned to take the kids fishing.  His only response was to give me an incredulous look and ask “What will you do if you actually catch a fish?”.  Haha!  He knows me well!  I told him that I was bringing gloves and a net so I thought I’d be ok.  

We packed our tackle box with hot dogs and bread.  I don’t do worms.  It had been quite some time since I fished, but once I got there, I remembered the basics.  Evelyn was determined to do everything herself.  It took a while, but she finally got the hang of casting.  I made sure to tell the kids to be careful because the hooks were very sharp.  At one point, Mitch walked by me and tripped while I was baiting a hook and managed to catch my finger.  That hurt and Mitch lost it when when saw the hook in my finger.  Once I assured him that I was not, in fact, going to lose my finger he calmed down.  But after that, I think they understood more why they needed to be careful.  We fished on one side of the pond, where there was a little space to practice casting.  Like I said, Evelyn got the hang of casting pretty quickly and always remembered to warn\alert us when she was getting ready to cast so we could give her lots of space.  Mitch was content to let me cast and then hold the fishing reel. Eventually we moved over to the little pier and dropped our lines straight down into the water.  There were dozens of fish and we got tons and tons of nibbles, but in the end we only caught one fish.  And it fell off the line as we were reeling it in.  We’re still counting it though!

It was fun, and while the kids still need to work on patience and being quiet, they did well for their first time!