Fishing Trip with My Grandsons.

Saturday morning plans were made for a fishing trip with one of my grandsons, Kaleb. As usual another grandson, Cody decided he wanted to go by late Saturday afternoon. I spent the day Saturday going over all my tackle checking it and getting it ready for Sunday's adventure. 4:15 a.m. Sunday morning my two grandsons and I got up, had breakfast and coffee and discussed facts about fishing. My grandsons had been fishing before but were anxious to learn all they could about fishing from me. So many questions and a lifetime for them to learn. Although I have many years of fishing behind me and more memories of fishing than I can ever disclose to them, I only hope I will be here long enough to show and teach them everything I know about fishing and the outdoors. 5:00 a.m. we loaded the gear up and headed to my favorite honeyhole. As it was still dark out, on the way there was conversation about the road, the fog, a opossum which crossed the road in front of us and of course fish and fishing. As we went through town, we stopped at Wal-mart Supercenter to replenish my supply of 5/0 laser point catfish hooks then back on the road again. 6:00 a.m. and dawn was just breaking. We were just minutes away from my honeyhole and my grandsons were already seeing the water beside us above the dam. As we pulled into the parking lot we could see the Great Falls waterfall and that the lights were flashing on the construction bridge to the Hydro-plant, indicating that the turbines were running and the dam flood gates were open. We got out of the truck and walked the upper trail as the lower trail was under water. Kaleb and Cody were both in awe over all the swift water, the falls, the vultures flying around over us, the fog hanging over the water, the wild flowers and wanting to know where we were going to be fishing. When we finally found a place along the bluff where we could get down to the waters edge to fish we went back to the truck and got our gear. Returning to the water, I began showing both grandsons how to put the chicken livers on the hook, how to cast the bait easy enough not to throw it off, how to cast out and handle the large catfish rods so as not to throw them in the water and how to cast into the swift currents and eddy's without getting crossed over each others lines. Though my two grandsons were more into casting out and reeling in to quickly to give the fish time to bite, they both did a wonderful job of listening to my instructions, and their casting out skills were well appraised, however they were both in open waters without trees, protruding rocks or logs and stumps. Although we all started out free lining our baits, I decided to put a sinker on and try bottom fishing. Knowing this to be a mistake in the fast moving current, I wanted to see if the fish were on the bottom of the river. As anticipated, I got hung up and lost my hook and sinker which turned out to be a good opportunity to show my grandsons how to tie on a hook. We'd been fishing for about 2 hours now and both grandsons were beginning to get alittle dis-interested due to not catching any fish. We decided to move to another fishing spot, one where the water wasn't swift and fast currents so we moved to a spot above the dam next to a bridge. Unfortunately after fishing there for another hour or so and still not catching any fish we decided to head for home and try fishing another day. On the way home we discussed the day of fishing and the fun we had even if we didn't catch any fish. Before reaching home they wanted to know when we would be going again. My only reply was " maybe the next weekend I'm off work". Another great memory for my collection.

Fishing We Go.

Well just a short update on my fishing. This Sunday ( April 12, 2009 ) I plan on getting up at 4:30 a.m. and heading out to Rock Island State Park for a morning of fishing for catfish with my grandson Kaleb. If all goes well we should come back with a nice bunch of fish for the skillet but they'll have to wait cause I'm cooking up a nice deer roast with all the trimmings. We'll be using chicken livers and fishing just below a spillway along the river ledges drifting the livers free lined. To date the smallest catfish I've ever caught there was probably 5-6 pounds. I'll give you full length report on our fishing outing later this coming week.