A day at the dam.

Today Weston (almost 2), Brody (4) and I (early 30s) went to Orwell Dam near Fergus Falls MN. I had two rules for the boys, stay by me and stay out of the water. I strongly encouraged Weston and Brody to throw rocks into the water. Orwell Dam has millions of rocks, I have fished there once before with Brody and he threw rocks to his hearts content.

The fishing adventure started out great. On the first cast, I hooked a smallie. I knew I would catch lots of fish, and I did. Smallies of all sizes, and one Large Mouth Bass. As I fished, I kept a close eye on my boys. Not only were there numerous rocks to be thrown, there was many things to explore. Weston was all over the place. I kicked him out of my tackle box several times. He kept finding things on the ground and in the rocks to eat. Both boys had fun peeing in the woods. They were having a hoot. They did a pretty good job of following the rules, especially Brody. Weston did wonder off from time to time, and I found him sitting in the river amongst the rocks. Not only did I perfect my cast and fish landing abilities, my vocal chords got a great work out.

The first story I would like to share is that we came upon a mid size snapper turtle. The boys and I had fun as we followed it around. Weston and Brody thought it was fun watching the snapper hiss and bite at the stick that I was jamming into it's face. The snapper got itself lodged between many large rocks. No doubt it would still be stuck there had not the three of us showed up. Needless to say, the snapper did find the river. It probably had it's first flight lesson as it flew through the air and skipped across the water. Don't worry folks, we stood around and made sure the snapper was ok. Old snappy was sticking his head out of the water and swimming around, happy as can be.

The second story is kind of neat. I was catching so many fish, and having a lot of fun. Whenever I caught a small smallie, I would call the boys over and cast the fish back into the water. The boys would have fun reeling in the fish. This one time, I caught a small smallie. I casted it out to the middle of the river and called Brody over. Brody starts reeling in this fish and I was surprised by how difficult of time Brody was having. There was lots of splashing in the water. Here the little smallie had tripled in size and it was jumping out of the water putting on a big show. It must have been 14-15 inches. I was dumbfound. The small fish must have fell off when I casted it to the middle of the lake, and the large fish must have hit the gizzit as Brody was reeling it in (the gizzit was the brand name of the artificial rubber tube I was using to catch the fish). What ever happened, Brody was shocked and had a great time reeling in such a big fish.

This adventure was truly an adventure, one that my boys are certain to remember. They were so worn out when I put them to bed, that they went right to sleep with little smiles on their face. I have no doubt that they are dreaming about fishing! I will make sportsmen out of them yet:)