Fish Story
This weekend I and other adult leaders took some scouts on a camping trip. We went to camp located about 140 miles north of the Twin Cities. The troop had never been to this camp so it was going to be a leaning experience for us.
There was one huge highlight for me, a scout and I think the other scouts too for the most part. I’ll get to that highlight in just a second. First a little bit about me.
As a kid I loved to fish. If I was ever near a lake or river, I had to throw out a line. My grandfather took me quite a bit. He said that he never new anyone who fished as much as I did. When I wasn’t out with him I would be on the dock. I would fish for hours and hours. To this day I will spend as much spare time as I can to fish when the opportunity is there.
One of the 3 scouts that joined our troop this last March, Sam M., has the same passion as I do for fishing. In fact I might be challenged to keep up with him. I figure he is my protégé.
So back at the camp the scouts and some of the leaders went out on a canoe trip and did a little fishing too. I did other things while they were gone. As soon as they got back to camp, Sam asked when we could go down by the lake and try fishing from shore. My answer was once we get done with dinner. Evidently he didn’t get enough fishing in on the canoe trip.
With dinner and cleanup complete Sam and I headed off to the lake right there by camp. Sam had brought along some wax worms for bait. I rigged up one of my poles for him to use (his pole broke on the canoe trip). He caught a few small sunfish and a few big ones two. We were releasing everything that we caught. A couple of other scouts joined us. One of the other scouts caught a real nice crappie. I asked Sam if I could try catching a few crappies and he handed over the pole. I managed to catch one nice crappie. Fishing was pretty good but it was about to get a whole lot better.
While I was fishing for crappies Sam picked up my other pole which was rigged with a beetle spin and jig. The jig had a scented twister tail body on it. He went about casting it and retrieving several times. Because it was quite weedy and shallow it was pretty much cast out and than pull off weeds. As it was getting very close to dark the silence was broken by a loud splash that startled me. Than Sam said I got a fish. Boy did he. He was hooked up with a trophy bass. He landed it and I held it up for him to see. I think I was just as excited as he was. We took a quick picture of it and released it. My favorite lure came through once again.
Sam was doing exactly what I would have been doing at that age. Even though the chance of catching a fish was minimal, he was plugging away. Our next campout will have fishing opportunities too. I think I know where Sam and I will be.
Whenever you have a chance, take a kid fishing. It’s a blast.