lake fun & fishing 101

so last week, we headed over to lake josephine (just down the road from our place) for an afternoon of family fun.  one of the benefits of living in the land of 10,000 lakes– there’s a lake everywhere you turn!

i am a skiiiiny boy! 

daddy pointing at some fish.

this lake was full of little, but daring, fish!

i say “daring” because they’d swim right up around your legs!  they seemed to be especially attracted to mikey’s bright swim shorts (btw, swim shoes are a MUST when playing in a lake.  otherwise, it’s just ew). 

so phil decided he wanted to catch one with mikey’s bucket.  he tried and tried, but no luck.  but guess who DID catch a little fish?  that’s right!  yours truly…

not to be outdone, phil later ended up catching TWO!

we ended the day by letting mikey play in the playground that was there.  his favorite thing?  going back and forth, back and forth on this slide thingy.  phil and i were both surprised by how many times he could hang on to the little handle without phil holding him up!

and last night, we finally got around to do a little fishing (this one’s a different lake, also less than a mile from our place).  turned out to not be the best evening to try it as the fish weren’t biting like they usually do.  aw well…

casting the line…

reeling it back in…

many, many times.  and nothing!  phil and i took turns fishing and watching the kiddos.  we told ourselves that they were having fun, too.  what do you think? 

we were just about to call it a night, when suddenly i turn around (just after taking the above picture!) and phil presents me with this–

look how happy he is!    so we ended up taking our one fish home in a five-gallon bucket.  usually when people are out fishing for these little guys, they end up with a whole bucket-full! 

our catch of the night got a lucky break though.  we sorta forgot about him once we got home and the busy routine of getting both kids washed and in bed required our attention.  so this morning, he was still swimming around in the bucket and we decided to let him go back into the lake where he came from.  phil went to go set him free and reported back that he took off like a rocket.  kinda reminded me of a scene from disney’s ‘little mermaid’ where a fish escapes a fishing boat’s net and breathes a sigh of relief before swimming away.  remember that?  no?