Birthday Fishing

** Guest Blogger **

Eric Hendrickson

Instead of having a birthday party, which would have been limited due to Covid, my friend Roby and I took Silas on a fishing trip to set lines on the Elk River.

We spent a few evenings during the week, prior to going fishing, catching bait.  We caught over 60 Perch.  Stacee took Silas to pick out some snacks/junk food for our trip.  He picked Hot Tamales, Spicy Cheetos, Werther's Originals Caramels, Chex Mix, doughnuts (for breakfast), Pringles, and Mountain Dew to drink.

We headed off on our first overnight fishing adventure.  Silas was excited.

We got to the river around 7pm and set about (2) dozen limb lines.  We finished setting the lines around dark and caught nothing on our way back to the boat ramp.  We then went back to Roby's cabin, which was about 5 minutes away.

After getting back to Roby's place, we started a camp fire and ate hot dogs and smores.  After that we went down to Roby's pond to fish for awhile as we were waiting till midnight to head back out to the river to check the lines.

Silas was the netter and bait man.


The next round of checking lines was much more productive.  We caught (7) fish.  Six are shown on the dock and a 15lb flathead was on a stringer in the water.  Unfortunately, he escaped the stringer overnight (defect in the stringer) and is now loose in Roby's pond.  I sure wish we would have taken a picture of Silas holding him. 

We ended up getting back from the river around 2am.  We put the (5) channel cat in Roby's pond and headed back to the cabin to get a few hours sleep.  A storm rolled through about 10 minutes after we got into the cabin.  I figured it would be great for fishing, but I was wrong.

We got out to the river about 7am to make our final check of the lines.

Silas was tired, but he did a great job.  I was very impressed and pleased with my young fisherman.

After we got back from the river, we went down and did some fishing and swimming in Roby's pond.  The swim was nice and relaxing.

We left around 2pm.  What a memorable fishing trip!


Roby (and his wife) gave Silas a tacklebox with some tackle in it.  He absolutely loved it.  Silas is now all about fishing.