Go Fishing with the Family
Got out the the Rondout Reservoir earlier this week. I joined a local forum and have been watching as fisherman after fisherman were posting pics of the beautiful browns they have been pulling out of there lately. With each new post I was getting crankier and crankier about my inability to find the time to do a little fishing and started taking it out on the family. I guess it got to the point were my wife got tired of hearing me wine and decided to take some action. Being the great wife that she is, she took it upon her self to organize a last minute after-work fishing tip up to the reservoir. She sent me an email earlier in the day saying she was going to pick up our daughter early from school so that we can go up and finally get some bait in the water.
From that point on, my day immediately got better! I shot her back an email telling her to pick up some extra line for one of the extra poles and got right back to work. I became super efficient and mowed down the rest of my work load for the day, jumped in the truck and ran home to get the tackle ready. I arrived home to find my wife packing sandwiches and drinks. I grabbed the Gander Mountain bag with the new line off the table and quickly rigged the extra pole. We made it from Accord to the upper basin in about 23 minutes!
We got down to the shore and got setup pretty quickly. Chairs out, 3 poles in the water and had my sandwich half way unwrapped when I was reminded how much different it is fishing with the family then fishing with my buddies. “Honey can you unsnag me”, “Daddy can you untangle me”, “Daddy can you put some bait on for me”, “Can you go back up to the truck”. It is a lot of work being a fishing guide for two girls!
After we got settled down, my wife broke out the rest of the eats. The guys down shore from us have already pulled in two and my daughter is starting to become impatient (imagine that). No sooner did she get the last complaint out when WHAM! the pole goes over. My daughter quickly picked it up and started reeling like crazy until the fish began to fight and her reeling became irratic and hard-to-reel. “Daddy, help … I can’t reel it.” I grabbed the pole, reset the hook to make sure it was deep and bang … fish on!
As I got the fish close to shore I realized that I forgot one of the most important things a fisherman can forget … the net! Keeping the tip of the pole as close as I could to the water, I made sure the fish stayed in the water as long as I could as I reeled it to shore. Reaching past the tip of my pole with my hand I grabbed the line just above the fish and quickly (and as smoothly as possible) relocated the fish over dry land. The result: 19 inched 4 1/2 pound brown trout. Yum.
While fishing with the guys is fun, there is a huge amount of satisfaction that comes with having your family enjoy the outdoors with you. In a day and age where most kids are glued to their iPods, computers and video games, a shift in the way we perceive our new age culture can be accomplished by simply taking your kids fishing.
Lou Lynch is an avid sportsman and advocate for the conservation of the North American Whitetail Deer. For more information on the QDMA and how you can help your local deer herd visit www.HVQDMA.com .
2 Comments
I love catching brown trout, so much different than catching rainbows. It’s cool you caught something with the kids. Thats the best way to get them into fishing, to catch something in front of them.
Rainbows are fun also,for us up here in the northeast they aren’t as common as the browns and lakers. So it is a treat to catch one.
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