Here fishy fishy fishy!

At the campground, far away (really, it takes two full songs to get from campsite to beach while driving) is the most beautiful, clean, fun lake I have ever encountered in my life. While swimming, if the lake is not busy, large carp will come up to the shore to swim around and look for food. Scary at first (you hear Jaws music in your head), it truly is cool.

The boys are fascinated by these fish. The take nets down to the beach and have long learned the fish’s favorite food, licorice and cheese balls.

On this camping trip, the two older boys brought their fishing poles. We set up for the beach days on the opposite side of the beach we are normally on because there is a grassy knoll there that the boys could fish off of and not bother swimmers and yet are so close we can keep a close eye on them.

Using a cheese ball for bait, S2 caught this whopper of a fish. He was the hero of the beach. Kids and parents and teens all flocked over to him to check out his fish. He was the coolest little guy. After a few photos, we let him go.

After that fish incident, the boys got much more aggressive about catching fish. That and the water was a bit chilly for swimming. GM (my sister in law) bought the boys some worms and they began to catch eatable fish. I don’t like fish, can’t eat fish, they make me sick. The boys had forgotten to grab a bucket so (thankfully) they had to let them all go.

When my husband arrived to camp with us, he jokingly told the boys that if they caught enough he would make them up for them. Now, being the ingenious boys they are, they knew they had no bucket and moma wasn’t about to give up the dishes bucket for smelly fish so they came up with a rather creative plan. Backing two Tonka dump trucks together, they began to keep the fish in there. With them backed together, it was less likely the fish would jump out.

In doing this, they really created quite the crowd. They had a swarm of kids around them who were more than willing to keep running with a plastic cup down to the lake to fill the trucks up with water. These kids had never seen a fish caught and S1’s chest stuck out a little farther with grown up authority as he explained to kids how to catch the fish and yes, there really are fish that live in this lake and S2 would then tell them about the whopper he had caught earlier in the week and the kids eyes would get buggy eyed, run to tell their parents and then run back to dump more water on the fish.

No one caught a monster again, but they did catch enough for lunch. They had ever so much fun cleaning the fish, frying them on the campfire and gobbling them up. S1 declared they were better than fish sandwiches at McDonalds, and then wondered to him self how it was McDonalds caught all those big square fish.

And as much as I detest fish, I have to admit that it was great for the boys to have an experience only their daddy would share with them, a memory they will not soon forget, I am sure.