A Fishing Weekend – Part II

A Fishing Weekend – Part II
By Allan Olson
On Sunday afternoon, just over two weeks ago, we were back on the ice again. This time it was my wife and all our kids except Marcus (we couldn’t convince him to go, and couldn’t convince the girls to stay). Also along with us was my youngest brother again.
The previous day (as noted in last week’s column), the group consisted of my oldest brother, two of his kids, me and two of mine (Nikolai and Abigail). We had some challenges that day moving the fish house to a new location. First the house came off the hitch, and then later, when we were setting it up, the handle got the best of my brother and the cable came free from the winch. Still, we managed to get some fishing done and have a great time doing it.
Earlier in the week, my wife had left me with the kids and went out on the lake to spend time with her mom and sister. They managed to land over 30 fish! I was hoping she would bring that same luck this time, but it wasn’t meant to be.
Fishing was slow on that Sunday. I set the hook on three of them, and Abigail pulled two of them up to the top of the hole. She was thrilled each time, and was even willing to carry the fish to the bucket with her gloves on.
The last one she pulled up was the lunker of the weekend. She had just gotten in trouble for not listening and so was sitting on my lap when it hit – hard. The fight was on. The pull was harder than any of the previous fish of the weekend.
She finally decided to help land this nice fish. I was holding on to the pole and helping her crank it up. The fish came up out of the hole, but then the line snapped, and it dropped back down. I quickly stuck my hand in the water, grabbed it, and ended up throwing it under the fish house. Thankfully, I was close to the door and threw it away from any of the other holes. When we looked, the nice walleye was laying there on the ice. My brother went outside and retrieved it with the aid of a broom handle, sweeping it out to where he could grab it.
I was excited, and so were the rest of the kids.
Then we measured it, not once, twice, or even three times, but probably five or six times. We tried using the handle of the ice scoop, which had inches on it; we couldn’t find a tape in the house or in the tackle boxes. Finally we used George Washington to measure it. We held a dollar bill up on the backside of the walleye and moved it three times. My brother and I looked at each other. We still had the tail and a little more to measure. It had to go back.
Abigail ventured off to play with her siblings on the ice. She came back a while later and noticed that “her” fish wasn’t in the bucket. It had to go back, we explained. It was too big. It’s against the law to keep it. While daddy wasn’t happy about throwing it back either, Abigail was less pleased, and she briefly let her feelings be known about how unhappy she was.
We discovered later that someone had marked the slot limit on the wall of the fish house; that would have been helpful in our measuring process.
This fishing trip netted us only about four more fish for the dinner table, but at least none of the kids managed to get wet feet this time. Abigail had tried to convince her sister before we left that she shouldn’t go fishing because she might get wet feet again like last year.
Nikolai was being a patient young fisherman and was just waiting for a fish to bite. He got his fish – when it grabbed his hook, he was quick to set it, noticing the difference in the line, and he landed it by himself. It wasn’t a trophy, but it was perfect for the dinner pail.
Alivia, too, managed to pull one up, fishing with her uncle. He allowed her to reel one in that he had on his line.
In all, it was a great weekend of fishing, regardless of the minor frustrations of getting set up and dealing with children. In order for them to enjoy the sport when they get older, we need to be able to deal with them now so they can learn a love for the sport.
Thanks for reading and be sure to take a kid fishing.
As always, feel free to drop us a line and/or a photo, and have a great week. For more of my columns visit http://allan-crazykids.blogspot.com.

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