Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Fishing Vacation

Last week, my son and I went on our first solo vacation in a very long time. Other vacations we had planned in the past, always last minute included others. Not this one. I have to admit I was somewhat concerned that we wouldn't be at each other's throats the entire time, him pressing the limits of pre-adolescence and soon beginning 7th grade! sigh...Where does the time go?

Since he had pressured me less than two Sunday's ago about when he and I were going on vacation, I became as frazzled as I possibly can (which to most, isn't much - I'm a crisis master!) and did what only I do...procrastinate until the very last minute! I was feeling overwhelmed by having to give my son a fabulous out-of-state vacation but with having limited vacation time surplus from work as well as watching finances and having limited insight as to what my son actually wanted to do, I was at a standstill.

My son has really taken to fishing. Granted, the largest fish he has caught to date (in a five year span) has been a blue gill about the size of my hand. Not much progress, considering the years of investment, but truth be known, other than going to my parents we don't fish that often. Over the weekend a fishing "expert" friend told aided me in a trip to the store and picked out all of the spoons, spinners and fishing supplies I needed and even looked the other way when I picked out several because they were cute, cool, or pretty! Fish have feelings too, right?

We decided to head up north Michigan for five days. We stayed at a condo in Boyne for two nights and then went to Mackinac for two nights and visited the Island - in the drizzling rain. I figured five days of fishing how could we not catch a fish? We hit inland lakes, lakes, rivers, dams, etc. and our visibility of fish was almost nil, zero, zilch.

The second day we spent kayaking around a lake for four hours. We didn't see a single fish; however, we did see a few splashes which we quickly attempted to fish, with no avail. By happenstance, we came across a "Catch and Release" pond at the resort. We fished there that second evening and my son caught the biggest fish of his career, but clearly not a prize fish by any means; however, it was more than I caught!

The next day, I threw in my pole and settled in for a day of reading. My son managed to catch a few decent size trout. The rest of the vacation didn't include much fishing. We attempted to find other fishing areas, which included one Spring Pond where my son caught a few decent sized sunfish, but other than that nothing. Overall though, it was a great vacation and we had a good time!

As for fishing...I'm the laughing stock that I couldn't even catch a single fish from a Catch and Release Pond...Really, how pathetic am I?

Wait, don't answer that...

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