Now, when we got there, it was raining, I mean RAINING, like Noah on a Tursday raining. I had stopped and gotten some night crawlers for Mack to use (you ever take a six year-old fishing? You're gonna want to get some worms) and he was thrilled just taking the top off the box to see if the worms were alive. Much to his delight, they were. Moriah stared at the rain drops pick-marking the surface of the pond and turned to me, "Let's get going, Dad. I don't think we should wait it out; once we get started, it'll lessen up, or we'll get used to it. That's how irony works, anyway." My heart swelled with the kind of pride you can only understand as an obsessed parent whose child has embraced that very same obsession. And, she used "irony" the right way.
So, we tumble out of the Toyota into the rain and we start casting (well, Moriah starts casting, I've got a few minutes of baiting Mack's hook, explaining that the process is not fatal to worms, and then I blew his little formative mind by cutting the worm in half so we now had two sentient, active, squirming lumbricus terrestrii. He looked at me as if I had opened a new door to the secrets of the universe; which, in essence, I guess I had).
After the brief science lesson (which, by way, ended with me saying something akin to, "because they just do, I don't know why.") Mack and I joined Moriah. We fished for a while, I pretty much just kept lines in the water and worms on Mack's hook while Moriah used her favorite spinnerbait. A little while into it, Moriah called me and let me know she'd snagged that spinnerbait on some downed cat tails. As I made my way over to her, I cast my Carolina Rig out and gave it a couple of reel and tugs before handing her my rod while I worked to free her lure (it ended up being too well-snagged, so we lost the lure - I need to replace that ASAP). As I worked on her line, I heard her yell, "Daddy, you got something!"
I looked over and saw the line from the rod in Moriah's hands moving through the water. "No, YOU'VE got something! You're holding the rod!" I smiled, "Reel it in, Sweetheart!"
She did, and it was a bass running about 2 pounds. It was the only thing we caught that day (although Mack really got good at casting in the two hours we were there - going from just letting his line drop right next to the dock to casting out to the middle of the pond by the time we packed it in for the day).
The best part was that I was the one who had to call it a day for us. The kids would have stayed until we were soaked to the bone (we almost were anyway, though they had raincoats, thank goodness). They want to go again soon, and I'll need to get some more worms for Mack, because he's going to release the ones he kept into the wild over the next few days.
The wagon's going to roll on, but it's always ready to stop at a fishing hole, especially when the kids are on board. Thanks for riding shotgun with us!
