Watch out fishies!

So we took the boys fishing for the first time this weekend. They had asked about it periodically before but had never seemed to intent. Connor, however, really decided he wanted to go suddenly, spurred, inevitably, by an episode of the Wild Kratts, his favorite nature show. Jamie was lukewarm about the idea until I went to get them fishing poles, at which point he became very enthusiastic. We went outside and practiced casting in the front yard. They both did really astonishingly well, so off we went the next day.

The first thing we discovered was that the fish were not interested in anything but live bait. This was awkward because Connor is extremely sensitive to wildlife and didn't like the idea of using worms (there's a Wild Kratts episode about worms too!). Eventually we settled on the procedure of cutting the worms in half and letting one half go free and moved on, though Connor was still a little uncertain. The next issue, however, was that the fish turned out to be rather savvy. The water was clear and some of the fish were very close so we could watch them expertly nibble away the worm without getting hooked. Jamie had a couple of the line for a moment but they got away.

Nonetheless, they loved it and Jamie announced immediately that he wants to do it this coming weekend and every weekend, so I call it a success.