Tuesday at the Waterfalls

Jack's been asking me to go fishing again since the last time we went. We were going to go on Monday, but he ended up going to visit some church friends with Marissa. I promised him we would go fishing yesterday morning when we woke up, so I got home about 5:30 yesterday and after a quick taco dinner we jumped in the car and drove to the dam.

Since I wasn't so rushed this time, I planned ahead a little and we parked on the west end of the dam at the greenway trail-head this time. That means the sun was setting behind us as we faced the water, which removed the squinting that made the last trip a bit annoying. It also made it a lot cooler since the embankment is steep enough that we were sitting in the shade, and the breeze off the lake and the water coming down the spillways made it probably 10 degrees cooler down there.

As we walked across the field between the parking lot and the river, I had my fishing pole and the sack with the worms in it in one hand, and Jack grabbed my other hand. I couldn't help it. I started whistling the theme from Andy Griffith. Jack even threw a rock in the water when we got down to it.

So we picked out a big rock right on the edge of the water and put a worm on the hook. Jack told me that he likes worms now, but he still doesn't want to touch one. After a few casts, I found a spot where they were hitting the bait pretty good, so we proceeded to feed several worms to them before we got one to finally stay on the hook.

I let Jack reel the first fish in, but the reel was just clicking the whole time, so I took over and managed to bring it in. It was a really big bream, longer than my hand and thicker than my hand too. My cheap Walmart pole was bent nearly double trying to pull it out of the water. I was going to throw it back, but a guy walking by with a bucket asked me if he could have it so I let him take it.

After that we quickly caught a much smaller bream. As I threw him back in the water, the hook with a little bit of worm left on it dipped down into the water in front of us. When I pulled it out, there was a really tiny bream attached to it. I guess it was hiding beneath the rock we were sitting on and made it's move when it saw the worm. It was about 2.5 inches long at the most. At that point Jack decided that he like the little fish better than the big fish. I have to admit that the first bream was a little scary looking.

As the sun started setting, the fish stopped biting. We sat there on the rock for a while though, watching the bobber drift along in the current. There was no traffic sounds, no cell phones ringing, and even the planes flying overhead were way off to the north so we couldn't hear them. The only sound was the water coming down from the spillways and a dog barking on the other side of the river while it was playing with another child. Jack started getting tired and put his head down on my lap and we sat there just watching the river flow by.