Fishin'

Offspring has been after me to go fishing for quite awhile now. Being too cheap to buy a rod & reel (as I know he would lose interest after 1-2 trips), I signed up for a local park's free tackle gear program. Two months later, they finally mailed me my card so off we went to go fishing on Saturday. 



We bought nightcrawlers, 12 for $3.50 and the teenage clerk said "you know you have to put them on the hook, right?". Uh yes, what do you take me for? A GIRL? With that, duly went down to the dock to catch our dinner. 



We pulled the worms out and they were absolutely enormous. 



Offspring promptly chickened out of putting them on the hook because they were so, well, alive. Muttering "circle of life, circle of life" to myself, I stabbed the hook through him. He bled. As in red blood! Ok, so maybe I am a girl. That kinda squeamed me out. Being my first time, I just stuck the hook through the worm in one place, threw it in .... oh wait, back up. Once it was hooked on, I stared at the reel trying to figure out what to do next. There was a button and a reel. Figured that I should push the button to get it to cast out. Tried that, didn't work. Tried throwing it really hard, nothing. Eventually I had to give up and ask a guy down the dock how to cast. He looked at me as if I were from the planet Mars, but he showed us how to use the reel. After which I cast it with our worm dangling down in the water.

Reeled it back in shortly after and the worm was gone .... but no fish. Hrumph. Repeated this several times, never catching a fish but feeling all the tugs when the fish ate the (dangling down) worm but not the hook. In the meantime, we also had to change out our rod and reel 2 times because it didn't work. Eventually I gave up and the guy down the dock fixed it for us, the something or other inside, a bell maybe? wasn't tightened properly or some such thing. After he fixed it, it worked just fine. Except we didn't catch any fish. Then I figured out that I should probably hook up the worm several times so that a fish would have to eat the hook to eat the worm. Viola - I then caught a fish! I'm a genuis. My fish: 



Shortly after, Offspring caught a fish too and he was so tickled. His fish:



As it was his first fish ever (actually, mine too), he named it "First Caught". I had suggested we call it Dinner, but he demurred. I threw mine back, which irritated him to no end but he kept his and we brought it home in the worm box. I let him keep it in the box for a few hours, after which I threw it in the trash. However, he made me take pictures of it from every angle before I did. He was so sad that I was throwing it out, I swear, it made me almost tear up - he was so sad. (circle of life, circle of life, ....). I must be losing it - crying over a dead 3 inch fish?!?! Kids do that to ya.