Free Fishing Day

The second Saturday of each June is Free Fishing Day here.  We missed last year, but wanted to make sure that we got to take the kids this year.  There is a fish hatchery here that does fishing for just kids on free fishing day each year, and we figured that was our best shot of the kids catching anything, so we headed there first.

We did mess up in assuming that June 10th would have nice weather, so when the day started off chilly and drizzling, we didn't actually have any coats for the kids...  But they had fun anyway.

The Gav-man watching everything from the background.

We couldn't put poles in until 9:00, and at about 9:010 and 20 seconds Ellie had one of the first bites of the day, leading to one of the first fish of the day.  She was a little excited...  She caught her second fish about 3 casts later.  You can see how thrilled MG was for all of her big sister's success...

 Our next fish came two at a time as Kassidy and Mckayla both caught their first fish at the exact same time.  Kassidy also was jumping up and down, and soon after one of the rangers was over talking to us about all the excitement.  The staff there were great interacting with the kids, ours and others who needed more help.

 Kassidy caught her second fish soon after, but MG kept losing fish and breaking lines.  Also, all the fish with no caution got caught pretty quickly, so by 20 minutes in everyone around the pond was getting a lot fewer bites.  Poor Mckayla was getting a bit frustrated as she had seen her sisters catch fish so quickly.  Eventually though, she caught her second fish (limit 2 each) and all of the smiles were well worth the wait.

  Here were the big fisher-women with their catches.

Right after we went to a reservoir in the area, and Ellie reeled a fish in to where she could see it before losing it - once again on her very first cast.  I'm afraid she may have rather unrealistic expectations when it comes to how successful she will be each time she goes fishing.  However, this was such a fun day and was one of Steve and my very favorite memories from the summer.  We will definitely be making this fishing trip a yearly tradition!