Gone Fishin'

Now that things have gotten a bit more routine with school starting, we might have time to fill you in on many of the things that happened this summer that we never had the chance to say. This week we will post a few highlights from our trip to Colorado.

One of the activities we enjoyed while in Colorado was fishing. When Andrew heard about fishing he didn't stop asking "When can we go fishing, Dad?" The children's program at Spring Canyon had a day later in the week scheduled for fishing but Andrew was worried it may rain and be canceled and he would miss his opportunity to fish.

Spring Canyon stocks one of the ponds with trout. their goal is to make it easy for kids to catch fish. They succeeded in achieving their goal and therefore set a three fish per family limit. I am thankful that they make it easy to catch fish AND that they put a limit on our catch.

Andrew's hope to fish early in the week came as Andrew, Emma, Laura and I walked down to the pond armed with fishing poles, some bread, and a leftover peanut butter sandwich. We arrived to our chosen spot on the end of the dock. All three kids were excited to get a hook in the water. Andrew's hook was the first one in the water and it didn't take long until he got a bite. He was so excited . He bobber disappeared and his pole bent so far over the fish just about pulled the pole out of his hands. He was so cute. I'll never forget the look in his eyes when he had a fish on his line. He looked up at me with eyes as big as saucers with a look of excitement and yet uncertainty. He did not know what to do.

He looked at me, "Dad...HELP!" I said "You can do it Andrew, reel him in." He was smiling from ear to ear, every muscle in his body was flexed holding onto that pole with all he had in him. He tried to reel and couldn't at first, then he slowly started to bring his fish in. His pole zigged and zagged back and forth but Andrew stuck with it. I was worried the line would break. I wanted to get the fish in our hands before he got away. Andrew did it and we caught the fish, it was a big rainbow trout. Andrew was so proud to have landed such a beast, it was great.

My next problem was...he wanted to eat his catch. Eating it wasn't the problem, cleaning it was. I am NOT a fisherman and I had NO idea how to clean a fish. To make a long story short, I asked around, got the gouge and figured it out. It wasn't pretty but this city slicker got the job done done so so my boy could eat his catch. As it turns out Andrew prefers catching trout to eating them so I got to eat a lot of trout the night the camp cooked our fish for us. And I mean A LOT because we caught our limit the first day. The girls found other stuff they were interested in so Andrew landed all three of our fish.

When the day came for the kids to fish during the children's program Emma caught a huge brown trout, she had fun. Andrew did not catch anything that day, so he convinced his counselor to take him again that night. While they were fishing that night he caught the biggest brown trout the camp has ever seen.

This fishing experience was huge for Andrew. He's a different young boy now. He's ruled over the earth or at least four fish. My boy can land a fish (and I can now clean one) and I'm proud of him.