Fishing With My [nearly] 3 Year Old
Part of the fun of fishing is going through your tackle at home, organizing it, checking it and preparing which stuff you will need for the next fishing trip.
Over the past year or so my youngest boy has always taken an interest in what I happen to be doing with my tackle, especially the lures. Many times he wants a specific one to play with. So being a loving father, I take the hooks off and let him play with it/them (he has his favorites) encouraging him to look after it as "daddy needs it to go fishing with".
Over the last few months he has told me that he "wants to go fishing with daddy.", so last Sunday I took the day off work (Sunday is a regular working day in Israel) and took him and his elder brother to the beach.
We left early to avoid the rush hour and got there by 7:30 am; found a good spot without having to walk too far and I set up the ultra-light gear that I knew would be easy for him to handle.
Fishing with Orad (my [nearly] 3 year old)
After trying a few small lures I tied on a Rapala CD-1 and we were quickly into the fish (it was mostly me doing the fishing at this time) and his bucket of sea water soon had some occupants.
A Small Bluefish on a Rapala CD-1
A Small Bluefish and Others
Those small bluefish certainly put up a good fight - about one in three shook the hook with some of them jumping clean out of the water and shaking themselves vigorously.
After a while I switched tactics and tied on a small hook with a small sinker, baited the hook with small pieces of chicken so that Orad could start to fulfill his desire to 'fish with daddy'. As soon as the bait was in the water we were getting bites and managed to land a few small (to him they were big!) whiting.
He thoroughly enjoyed himself and was keen to take the caught fish and, after I unhooked them, put them in his bucket. Every so often we would put the fish back in the sea - not a good idea to keep fish in a bucket in the hot sun and 32°C temperatures!
A Quick Photo of Some of the Fish Before Being Released
It was a wonderful day and I'm sure he will want to 'fish with daddy' again. For next time I am going to have to teach him how to cast....
Tight lines!
Cool! It's never too early to start fishing! :)
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