A Day of Fishing

We spent a day fishing over Spring Break.  We started out one morning with my parents near Hartford, Kansas on the Neosho River.  My Dad had been fishing here several times over the last couple weeks and knew a good spot we could all fish from the bank easily.  The White Bass were running and he knew we'd all get to catch some fish.  He was right!  We mostly used live Minnows for our bait, but Dad used some jigs too.

We all reeled in at least one fish that morning.  It was a lot of fun to get one hooked and then pass the rod and reel to one of the kids to reel in.  They could hardly believe how many fish we were catching. We easily caught 40 White Bass.

Silas especially loved helping to catch the little Minnows from out of the Minnow bucket.  He would capture one and bring it to me each time I needed to rebait my hook.

The kids also had a lot of fun playing in the dirt and climbing up and down this steep dirt embankment. 

Silas would get a big smile on his face when it was his turn to reel a fish in.  His excitement even carried over to anybody reeling in a fish.  He couldn't wait to see what each person reeled in and anxiously would watch at the edge of the river to see the fish surface.  He wanted to help put the fish into the cooler to keep if they were big enough and if not, he wanted to be the one to throw them back.  He started out a little nervous to touch the White Bass, and did not particularly want to hold them by their lip.

Below you can see he picked them up anyway he could grab them, other than by the lip, and then couldn't stop smiling!

We kept 27 White Bass from the river.

Thank you Dad for cleaning all of these fish for us.  My Dad is a master fish cleaner.  He could probably be in a contest.  He has been doing this for MANY Many years.

We took a short break to eat a late lunch, then headed out to a friend's pond in the country to do some catch and release fishing.

While we were there we caught some "Whoppers".  Some big Bass and some Crappie.  Dad caught the biggest Bass, but I think Sarah may have had the biggest one on her line reeled in, right up to the dock, when her line broke, and we watched it swim away.  While we were there Silas even became brave enough to start picking the Bass up by their lip to help throw back.  He is going to be a great fisherman!  Of course, he will have the best of the best to learn from... His Popee and his Daddy.

It was a very fun day!  That night when we were finally back at my parents house, and we had eaten dinner, gotten all cleaned up and ready for bed, I went downstairs to find this little Sweetie Petey asleep in a chair.  He was sitting up hugging a giant fish pillow.  No doubt, he had a great day fishing and was going to have some sweet fish dreams that night.