Fishing with the grandson

“Who wants to go fishing? I asked.

“I do!” answered Beau, my 3-½-year-old grandson.

“Well,” I replied, “you better go get your fishing pole.”

“It’s a wod, Gwanpa.”

And not just any rod, Beau has a #95 Lightning McQueen spinning rod.

Even Grandpa doesn’t have a Lightning McQueen fishing wod!

I tied an 1/8-ounce yellow head jig to Beau’s line, hooked a maggot, and snapped a small red and white plastic bobber about 3 feet from the jig.

Preferring not to wear the jig in my ear, I asked Beau if I could cast the bobber close to the reeds, “where the fishies live.”

The bobber splashed down, the jig sank, the bobber bobbed, I jerked the rod and handed it to Beau who held the rod up high and cranked the reel as fast as he could.

“It’s a BIG one, Gwanpa.”

I swung the 7-inch perch into the boat and removed the hook.

“Can I see the gills?”

After looking at the gills, we put the fish back into the water “to gwow bigger.”

I can’t pretend to have invented kid fishing because there were several other boats nearby with dads and grandpas doing the casting and releasing and a small person doing the cranking.

Including one dad who was keeping up with five kids!

I like to fish leadhead jigs with kids because the jig acts like a handle for the hook making releasing easier.

And the person who invented the anti-reverse (so kids can’t reel backwards) deserves a Nobel Prize for Family Peace!

Jerry Smalley’s Fishful Thinking column appears weekly in the Hungry Horse News.