The boat...

...it works. It finds fish!

This one here's not the biggest fish in the lake. Not nearly the biggest fish Andrew hooked that day but it was the one that we took home. It was his first fish and it swallowed the bait and hook so it wasn't going to survive.

It ended up being just a smidgen over 10 inches long. A nice little rainbow that put up a pretty good fight. I got the crap beat out of me while he pulled the tip of the pole up. It was pretty funny to watch, I'd imagine.

Jackie got a huge kick out of it. Andrew would lower the tip of the pole and then crank on the reel. I'd tell him to get the tip up and keep reeling. He'd whip the tip up... not once, not twice but five or six times in a row... beating me up with it as I stood behind him "helping" him land the fish.

What a day.

A bit later we moved to another area of the lake and got into a jackpot of trout. I couldn't get the worms on the hooks fast enough. One time in particular I'd baited my hook, left it dangle over the side while I baited Andrew's. A fish came to the surface and took my hook right next to the boat.

I cast Andrew's line out for him, grabbed my pole and released the 8 incher that happened to take the hook. I no sooner got the fish released when Andrew's pole bent hard. He had a NICE fish on this time.

Remembering the beating I took before I just sat down behind him and told him to keep the tip of the pole up and keep reeling the fish towards the boat. He was doing great at first. The fish rolled once... a nice fish! When Andrew saw the size of it he got real excited and kind of forgot about that "keep the tip of the pole up" thing I'd been reminding him about. Oh yeah, he forgot about cranking the reel too... a critical part of landing a fish.

No problem though, he was playing a very good fish and was enjoying the heck out of it... in his own way.

We watched him and offered advice. Finally, the fish rolled again and the hook popped out about ten feet from the boat. Either way, Andrew was ecstatic! You'd thought he'd battled Moby Dick! It was a large fish, much larger than the 10+ incher we had on the stringer but then again, you're going to have to take our words for it, eh?

About an hour later the weather took a turn for the worse. The clouds began to build, the wind kicked it up a couple of notches and the rain began to fall.

I fired up the motor and headed back to the launch... in all it was a great day!

Yah fun, impromptu, relaxing, humorous... a great day.

As a side note, I've been focusing some energies on another blog and haven't paid much attention to this one lately. The other blog is complete so now I'm back. Thanks for the emails. Everything's okay here... I was just a bit pre-occupied.