Sunday, August 24, 2008

The One That Got Away

Every fisherman needs a good fish story. Now Tyler has one. I don't think he'll mind if I share it on his behalf.

Yesterday after dinner we took the kids fishing. We had such a nice time the week before, we thought we'd try it again. We went to a different lake and fished some place new to us.

Shortly after we got ourselves settled, Ron and Danielle went to explore another spot while Tyler and I threw our lines in. Suddenly Tyler gave his pole a big jerk and jumped out of his chair. He struggled to reel his line in and yelled to me for help. I thought he was exaggerating until I put my hand over his to help him reel. I have never reeled in anything that heavy! It was amazing. He kept a firm grip on his pole and the two of us continued to slowly reel his line in. I thought maybe we were pulling in a log or something else really heavy, but then part of the fish's tail broke the surface of the water. His tail was HUGE! Based on the size of his tail, he had to be at least 2' long! (Tyler claims it was a baby whale.) At this point, a crowd of people had started to gather and were all waiting to see what Tyler was going to pull out. He was so excited. We continued to slowly reel the line in until the fish was about 3 feet from shore, and then we heard the terrible sound of the line snapping. The pole became light again, and everyone around us moaned. One guy offered to jump in and grab the fish, but it was too late. I grabbed the floating bobber while Tyler processed what had just happened. Instead of being sad about losing his "whale", he was super excited about almost catching it! The crowd dispersed while Tyler and I rehashed the excitement. And then Ron and Danielle came back. They missed everything. Tyler was so excited he could hardly get the full story out. Ron thought we were exaggerating, but there was one woman left who verified our account. It really was an amazing experience!

We're pretty sure Tyler's almost-catch was a huge catfish. Someone else a little further up the beach caught a 15lb catfish later in the evening. We should have asked her to check for our hook
in the catfish's mouth.
The rest of the evening was dull in comparison. Ron and I each caught a perch and Tyler caught this little guy. Danielle entertained herself with the shells on the shoreline until the sun went down. Once the sun went down she entertained herself by driving us crazy. We called it a night around 10, packed up our chairs, and left with some great memories and an even better fish story.


2 comments:

Wandering Writer said...

To catch a catfish that big, you need a pink Barbie fishing pole--or so I've heard on the news.

Lori said...

He thought of that story, too. We showed him the news story earlier in the week. He was just sure his "baby whale" was bigger.