Get your kids excited about fishing.

[fish4942]

My son recently lost his excitement and confidence in fishing. He has had some horrible outings lately. What’s worse for a kid is when other kids seem to catch something on every cast yet nothing seems to even look his way when he would cast out. But the other day my brother texted me during one of my sons downer days on the lake. He said a guy just caught a 35lb catfish out of a pond that was just down the street from my house. For some reason this triggered something inside my son. He all of a sudden had this urgency to go to the pond. We often fish there with on and off success, but now it seemed like a little voice had spoken to my son saying “go back to the pond…” I mean this kid had an itch that he needed to scratch. Before we could go to the pond the wife insisted that I finished a tree trimming project that I started the day before. I told my son that he needed to help me out so we can go hit the pond. The kid beat me outside and single handedly dragged tree branches that I had cut from my backyard to the front yard so I could cut them down further and dump them.

Well, once we got to the pond his foresight came to fruition. We both had 2 poles and we couldn’t hardly get one fish out of the water and re-bait before another fish was running off with our worms and bobbers. We were yanking catfish out of the water at a good clip. I was amazed at the action. But more importantly was how much fun my son was having. He had never caught fish at this paste before and you could see his urgency in trying not to waste one moment or opportunity. Then came the special moment. Although I’ve fished since I was a little boy, I haven’t really landed any particularly large fish. But this day that changed. I pulled in the largest fish (regardless of species) that I had ever caught. I felt like a kid myself when I saw it surface and I could see the size of it. But wait, that wasn’t the special moment. The special moment was when my son reeled in an even bigger fish than mine. His eyes lit up like they did when he got his first bicycle. He dropped his pole, ran about 20 yards, came back and jumped on me screaming and yelling. I thought he was going to cry there for a moment. Well, I actually thought I was going to cry for him.

All of that was great and a great ending to what seemed like a doomed fishing career. But the most important part about this whole deal is now I don’t have to feel bad about wanting to go fishing every day. My son now wants to go everyday and I can’t see my wife denying our son the opportunity to spend some man to man time with his dad.