Kid Fishing

    On Memorial Day I drove over to Ellensburg and spent some time with my son James and his sweet family. My eight year old grand daughter, Britton, has been asking me to take her fishing for some time. That was the main goal of the trip, to take the grand kids fishing.  I arrived a little after 1:00 in the afternoon and received the usual enthusiastic greeting from the kids. Even little Nora smiled big for me.  My son, James, had located a "kids only" fishing pond on the east side of Ellensburg. We wasted no time in packing up the kids and heading out to the old fishing hole.

    The fishing experience started out somewhat slowly.  Our side of the pond was pretty weedy and seemed to have a lot more polliwogs than fish. These were not the normal run of the mill tadpoles. These were bull frog tadpoles, about the size of small perch.  We set up the kids with bobbers with worms for bait.  After the normal " kid fishing" comedy of errors Britton succeeded in catching her very first fish.  After appropriate photographs we put her little sunfish back in the pond. Britton was afraid that it was dead, but it swam away vigorously as soon as it was back in the water.

Britton's fish looked pretty impressive from the right perspective

A little less impressive looking here.

    We later moved to a better location on the pond  where the weeds weren't quite so thick. We also switched over from worms to power bait, something pink and sparkling that seemed to better match the girls' attire. As we started fishing in the deeper portion of the pond, we got immediate results. Within seconds of the bait hitting the water, the bobber would begin to move.  Britton caught a nice little rainbow trout about five minutes after we changed fishing spots. We fished that spot for another hour which allowed both Lucy and John to catch a nice little trout too.  Britton also caught another trout, one that was a little bigger than the other three trout.

    John told his fish that he loved him and then named him Max. That lead me to suspect that John was a little unclear on one of the main goals of fishing. However, each of the kids caught their first fish. They all had a great time and we left for home while everybody was still happy.

Britton's first trout

 

Happy fishermen holding their catch

    John was not happy about me cleaning the fish and none of the kids were enthusiastic about eating their catch.  Since they don't eat a lot of fish in their family that shouldn't have come as a surprise. We had a nice little dinner of pan fried trout with both home made french fries and fried sweet potatoes.  The adults ate the fish and the kids loaded up on the french fries.

    After dinner we spent some time singing and playing.  They had invited some friends to come over for family night. We had two soprano ukuleles, James' guitar, and a bass ukulele. I learned that the Children's Hymn Book has chords listed. I'm embarrassed that in eight years serving in the Primary I never had noticed that.  We sang a wide variety of songs ranging from "He's in the Jailhouse Now" to "Give Said the Little Stream",

     I decided to leave at about 8 pm so I wouldn't get back to Snohomish too late. After all, its only a two hour drive. I didn't count on the Memorial Day Weekend traffic persisting that late. I drove normal freeway speeds until I got to Elk Heights, about 20 miles west of Ellensburg.  All of a sudden the freeway was more like a parking lot.  It took me two hours to drive from Elk Heights to Easton, a distance of twenty miles.  After Easton the traffic started to break up and I got back to normal freeway speeds.  I managed to arrive at home in Snohomish a little after midnight.  It was worth the traffic though. How often does a grandpa get to help three of his grand children catch their first fish?