Father and Son Fishing Fun!

First of all, if you read the tag line for our blog, you'll note that this is a "haphazard account" of what's happening in our lives.  I'm hoping in the next few days to post several blogs to try to bring folks up to date on some things that have been going on since my last post...Kristina has been doing a much better job than I have.

So, when Kristina's family came to visit in June, Nathaniel's Aunt Laura bought him some realistic-looking freshwater fish toys (you can see him clutching them at the end of that blog post).  Well, he promptly learned their names, and they've been his constant companions ever since then.  You can imagine how excited he was to learn that we have five (yellow perch, largemouth bass, pumpkinseed, bluegill, and crappie) of the six fish in our lake in Minnesota (we don't have the same type of catfish, but we do have bullheads, which is fine with him).

Somehow (trust me, I didn't teach him this) he learned that we catch fish on a hook with a fishing rod.  So he started pretending sticks were fishing rods, and told me he was going to catch fish with his "blue" hook (not sure where that came from).  Needless to say, he was excited when we finally left for the lake last month.  He told me he was "going to catch all the fish in the lake."  He even brought the small fish/minnow net and fishing outfit his Grandma Cynthia gave him for his birthday (sadly the net didn't make it into the blog post showing the outfit).

Nathaniel was super excited to go fishing.  So the first chance we got, we headed down to the dock with one of the children's fishing rods his Grandpa Appelt got for the grandkids use.


After baiting up, we cast the line out and waited for the fish to bite.


We also had to learn how to reel in the line.


Fishing was quite slow that day, but our patience eventually paid off.  Nathaniel got to check one of the fish he wanted to see off his list, Largemouth Bass!


We also had a lesson on properly and carefully holding a largemouth bass.


I think that was the only fish we caught that day, but he was as patient as a 2.5 year old can be and generally stayed on task.  We eventually told him the fish were sleeping and told him we could fish again tomorrow.  So, he grudgingly agreed to go upstairs, but he held me to my word the next day.  While Kristina was in town, Nathaniel asked me to take him fishing again.  Unfortunately, because I didn't have a photographer handy, we didn't get photos of that experience.  However, since we fished for over an hour, we were still at it when Kristina came back, so she was able to get photographic evidence of our much more successful outing (consisting mostly of keepers).  As you can tell, Nathaniel was excited and proud.




Nathaniel got to add a couple more fish to his list.  He actually reeled in some yellow perch by himself while I did most of the heavy lifting with the keeper bluegills and the 1.5 lb bass that was WAY to strong for that rod and reel.  You might also note the net (from Grandma Cynthia) in the photo.  Nathaniel and I had a system down.  I'd take the fish off the hook and put it in his net.  Then, he would walk down the dock to the floating basket, which I would pull out and he'd (with help from me) dump the fish into the basket.   He LOVED it, and catching over a dozen fish in an hour kept us busy.  The next outing we learned more about the difference between "keepers" or "basket fish" and fish we throw back.

I don't think I can find words that adequately express how I felt to be out fishing on my favorite lake with my son, who was as enthusiastic about fishing as I was.  I'm guessing my dad might have some idea what that feels like.

You can find more photos of our fishing experiences together here.

Christopher