Gone Fishin

If you know me or have read the above tab "Just a Few Things" then you know that I enjoy fishing. But to be honest these days it's hard to find the time to enjoy wetting a line. Our summer seemed to come and go in a blur and now we are into our busy soccer season so today may have been the last time this year. But it was probably one of my favorite quick fishing trips ever. Generally 1 or more of the kids come with me. If my oldest is coming then we actually fish because he has the patience like me to fish all day and catch nothing and still call it a good day of fishing. The middle 2 boys are another story if they don't catching something in the first couple of casts they are a lost cause and are off doing something else. Elli has kind of been a wild card and I wasn't totally sure she was all in when it came to fishing but today I think I got my answer.

I took the day off and told her when she got out of school that I was going to take just her fishing with me and she was truly excited. Turns out she told her teacher and I may have gotten the biggest hug ever from her.

We grabbed her Disney Princess pole and my bag of 8 different rigs and a couple of tackle boxes and we started jamming to Stellar Kart's song Gone Fishin' just to set the mood. We didn't get 5 minutes away and she got a case of the are we there yets. Didn't help that we went by the river a few times and she was thinking that was where we were going. But soon enough we were there and she helped carry what she could while I looked like a pack mule. 

It was pretty funny that while I was getting her all set up she was amazed at how many different butterflies there were but then she went to catch something and I heard a shriek when the grasshopper she had caught jumped away and she had this confused look on her face. I told her it was just a grasshopper and she was like "oh" and then was OK. But it made me think of my sister and her love of grasshoppers so I had to laugh a little. 

We fished a bit but it was more like teasing and playing with all the frogs as they chased my frog lure around. Elli thought they just wanted to be friends with it and were playing. She didn't believe me when I said they were trying to eat it. She just thought that was pretty dumb of them because it wasn't real. 

We decided to move to the end of the pier to try our luck. Elli had just cast and I had my back turned when she said where did my bobber go? I told her she had a fish. She didn't exactly remember what to do so I told her to just real it in and as soon as she saw her catch she let out a squeal. After she posed for her pictures I told her it was time to give her fish a kiss and put it back and she gave me a pretty dirty look. 

Her very next cast netted the same results. But now she was getting cocky. She proclaimed she was going to be a professional fisherman. I explained to her she would have to touch the fish and she quickly changed her mind.

She didn't rub it in that she skunked me and she was just happy to spend time with me and I didn't care I didn't get a bite because I saw pure joy on her face and we got the chance to share that moment today.

So the final score was Disney Princesses - 2 Pflueger & Browning - 0. I used to work at Bass Pro so I have an obscene amount of gear. But I generally don't throw everything I own unless I'm fishing on my own and I can focus on my twitching and jerking (and no that has nothing to do with Miley Cyrus) and roll through all my color combinations of every lure to find what they're biting on that day. But more importantly when I'm fishing on my own it's my time to talk to God. I've had some great moments and some I've really struggled with during this time but regardless I always feel closer to God when I leave than when I arrived.

Every moment I can ever remember fishing has always been a great memory for me. From fishing with my grandma as a kid at the gravel pit (pictured above), catching Bertha (also in the above picture), taking Cole on the "guy" fishing trips with Michelle's grandpa, uncle and brother to not even picking up my own pole to fish just so I could teach my kids my tricks of the trade. Every moment fishing has had an impact on my life and my hope and prayer is that my kids will be able to say the same thing when they look back on our time spent together gone fishin.