My Little Fisherman

During our trip last week, Pierre and I introduced the boys to fishing.

Valérie and Jean-François gave each boy a starter-fishing kit complete with rod and reel, tackle box, lures and hooks, as birthday presents. What a great gift! And definitely a gift that kept on giving, providing for several hours of family fun.

Pierre and I set-up the rods (with a quick Internet how-to. Honestly, what would I do without Google?), gave the boys a strict talk about not messing around with the hooks, and headed-off for the dock.

Turns out, Benjamin is an avid little fisherman. He loved it! And he ended up catching the biggest fish of the week.

Ben and his big catch!

Now, we were strictly catch-and-release during this trip (mostly because we didn’t catch anything big enough to eat!!). But, when fishing with kids, I really don’t think that how many are caught, or what is caught, or even if anything is caught at all matters….for me, it was about finding something new that they, especially Benjamin, loved doing. For Benjamin, actually catching a fish was a bonus. He was all about the reel-in. The line would be cast out for him (the thought of the boys throwing anything with a sharp hook on the end of it gives me the chills), then he’d slowly reel in the line, keeping an eye on the bobber all the way. Once the line was close enough that he could see the hook, he would say: “Nope. No fish. Just a worm.” Then, out would go the line, and he’d do it again. And again. And again. One morning, we even took out the row-boat and let the boys fish off the back. Ben fished for over an hour. Cast, reel, look, cast, reel, look, cast…

I remember doing the same thing as a kid. My parents would cast out the line, and give me and my siblings a stern, “Do not touch the reel.” Every once in a while though, when they weren’t looking, we’d give that reel a little turn. Soon enough, that bobber would be back at the dock, and we’d try to convince my parents that it was the tide in the lake that brought it in. Only later did we learn about tides.

Benjamin and Nicholas wanted to touch the sunfish.

We caught a whole lot of sunfish last week, and one unidentified scaly-pal (trout??) who had not only our worm, but a much smaller fish in his mouth:

 

The boys, of course, wanted to know why he had a fish in his mouth. This started a whole circle-of-life conversation as Pierre and I explained to them how big fish eat little fish who eat the littler fish, and so on. Ben thought about this for a moment, gave Pierre and me an “I don’t think so. My parents are so dumb" look and said:

“Actually Mommy, I think that fish is his baby, and the big fish is just carrying him around when he’s too tired to swim.”

I like Ben’s explanation better. After that catch, the boys wanted to look into the mouths of every other fish pulled out of the lake. No other baby fish were found.

A magical moment with my boys.

As for Nicholas, he just wanted to know why there were no sharks in the lake. He is all about sharks lately. Hum the theme from Jaws as you take a look at the pictures below.

Da-da

Da-da

Da-da-DA!!!

xo Naomi