fishin with a four year old

[wareagledc]

for the first time i took my 4 year old son fishin with me on a boat alone. just me and him. we went to dekalb lake and rented a little 14 foot flat bottom john boat with a 30lb trolling motor. I got some nightcrawlers for him and rigged up his superman fishing pole with a small hook and a float. we launched out and right away i started heading for some fallen trees to fish. i threw it out for him and told him to wait for the float to go under then yank and reel. MISTAKE!!! he had reeled it up close to the boat then sure enough yanked and wham hook to my arm. well i calmley removed the hook then told him to leave it out in the water and not yank it just reel if the float went under. then the 30 mph winds kicked up and i starting looking for the anchor and realized there was not one. what kind of boat doesn't have an anchor? do you know how hard it is to cotrol a flat bottom boat with 30mph wind with a four year old tangling up line and reeling in every 2 seconds and expecting a fish and then asking you why the fish are not eating. i caught one small bass on a jig and let him reel it in. in the process he steped on the worms spilling the dirt everywhere making mud in the bottom of the boat. i took the fish off and he wanted to hold it i told him how to grab it by the lip and when he did it floped and he threw it in the now muddy floor. the fish went crazy flinging mud all over us. i laughed about it and then we slowly trolled over to a cove to escape the brutal wind. we drifted around fishing for hours with no bites. i could not figure out why. maybe it was him hollering and banging around and droping stuff and stomping on the bottom of the boat. i gave up on trying to get in a good spot and me fishing and just trolled up to a tree and tied up to it. the water was clear and about 4 or 5 foot deep. i took the hook off his line and tied a weight on it to let him play around and pratice casting and reeling. i asked him if he was ready to go and he was like "no daddy i haven't catched any fishes you caught a bass and i want one too". right then i realized that my 4 year old was infected with the same additiction for fishing i was. even though we had been out for 6 hours and not caught but one little bass he wanted to stay. how many kids will do that? i retied his line and we tried for a while longer and nothing so we headed in. i had the best time even though i could not fish myself much and we only caught one little bass. i learned that you have to be very patient with a kid and just laugh at the things they say. like "i want to catch a blue fish and a green fish and a christmas fish". if you get the chance to fish with a kid take your time and just enjoy the little tikes. they will make you realize why you started fishin in the first place to have FUN. we all take it to serious sometimes and need reminders to just relax and enjoy.