First Fishing Trip

Yesterday we took the kids fishing. We figured that it would be best for Emmett's limited attention span if we went to a fishing farm for his first few attempts at the sport so that when we go fishing for real someday he will at least understand what we're attempting when we sit for hours next to a lake and do nothing.

We started off with a picnic dinner, which was fun, but Emmett was so excited about the fish we could only get him to sit long enough to eat his bread before he was off and running again.

Bethany was a happy spectator.

Fish farm "fishing" is fun for the little kids because they get so excited watching the fish swim around. Even though it's not very fair to the fish, it's great entertainment for Emmett, which is really what we were going for.

Emmett helped Casey hold the fishing pole for a little while, but got bored after about five minutes. Bethany sat happily on the ground and picked at the grass while Emmett ran circles around us.

When we finally snagged a fish (and by finally I mean that I think it took about 20 minutes, which is an exceedingly long time for a 2-year-old), we called Emmett back and he and Casey landed it together.

The poor fish was caught on his side. That's how full the ponds were. So like I said, it's not too fair for the fish and it's not really very sportsman-like, but can you imagine getting the kids up at 4:30am and going fishing for 5 hours? I actually can, and the picture in my mind is nightmare material. This is much better.

Emmett was fascinated watching Casey try to pull the hook out of the poor fish. 

Once we got the fish free, however, Emmett was a little nervous about getting too close to it.

Bethany, on the other hand, had no problem stretching out her hand to touch the fish.

Once Emmett saw that Bethany liked it, he decided that the fish was nice after all. He wanted to give it a big kiss. So we let him.

And he wanted to hold the fish too!

Then he wanted to kiss the fish some more. And some more. And a lot more. We decided that the first time was funny, the second time was still a little comical, but beyond that it was just too disgusting to let him continue. We took the fish away and put it in our bucket.Then we took him to the restroom and washed his hands and face.

We stuck around a little longer and let Emmett run around and Bethany pick at the grass some more. At $5.00/fish, we felt like we had caught our limit. So we packed up and called it a day. It was a bit pricy, but we had a great time and a successful first fishing trip.