Right now, we are fishing in the yard, because Sam’s new fishing rid
is broken. It seems to have come that way. I am having flashbacks to
my childhood, when every single thing of this nature I ever received
was always broken, and could never be returned and replaced until the
stores opened, a seeming eternity later…
But Lily is happy! Note the big plastic weight on her line. We are
thinking that leaving that on will make catch and release fishing much
more pleasant.
The end result of all of this was that Wyatt tired of “fishing” almost instantly, Lily shortly thereafter, and Sam became discouraged and noted that we couldn’t even see any fish where we were fishing. We found that the only thing we had in common with real fishermen was a deep conviction that the fish must be biting better where someone else was fishing, so we walked over to a few other families. Lily ate our bread bait while Sam kept trying, until finally another dad–a man who was really and truly casting, and who wore his bait in a sack around his neck, surely the mark of a committed fish type, took pity on him and offered him some dead flies and a brief lesson. The other dad–a man with hisbait in an ice cooler in a wagon–watched my dad and Sam mess ineffectually with the flies for a while before offering up a few worms.
The worms brought us close. We saw a fish eat one off the hook, and Sam actually pulled another fish out of the water, only to have it let go of the worm at the last possible minute. He seemed pleased, so we called it good, and I, in particular, felt it had been a really good day’s fishing.
I didn’t have to touch the fly, the worm or the fish.
KJ Dell’Antonia
sent from my iPhone