Looking back

Spring isn't technically over for a while yet, but I start thinking I'm fishing during spring long before it arrives. And now summer patterns are beginning to set in.  Spring 2014 has been a good one. Like last year about this time, I've hit 20 inches or better in four trout streams so far. Was awfully close in a fifth with a 19 incher, but can't claim it - yet. Also, folks who have joined me on excursions to rip

jigs or twitch plugs have collectively hit the 20 inch mark in that many streams as well - although I stand by myself in one river and have been bested in another, making the spread of streams that have produced big fish just a little wider than four.  Trout have made up the majority of my pursuit, but I've also connected with some nice northern pike in one river and some walleye on a couple streams. All that's really lacking in my river pursuits so far this spring by my usual standards is a good smallmouth trip.

Travel for work resulted in seeing new water, directly resulted in one of my 20-inchers, and indirectly resulted in one of my best browns of the year when making a subsequent return trip. A hefty 22 incher caught in a sudden thunderstorm. One of the keys this spring, like most any other spring in the West, has been finding fishable water. I played the weather right and hit a fabulous stretch of time in April when the weather was warming but stream flows were still at winter lows for just a couple days before discharge skyrocketed. I also leaned on tailwaters once the melt began to blow the freestone streams out, many of which remain unfishable. I've hit three primary tailwater streams so far (four if you count multiple dams on the same river), none of which have yet been the Bighorn.

Two rivers involved weekend or longer camping trips. One involved building a pickup rack to carry my jon boat and be able to tow the camper at the same time, which resulted in a couple days of floating productive water, holding and drifting under electric power rather than oars. Another river was fished just for the day, but involved 200 miles of one-way driving before and after. Left before dawn and got back after midnight. Such was the search for clear water. But each paid off big time in the scenery taken in, the family fun of camping, hanging out with friends, and the big fish that were encountered.

So far this spring I have fly fished very little. The focus of each of these trips has been probing the high water with jigs and using plugs as appropriate. I have fond memories of my dad sitting in his bass boat when I was a kid holding up some gargantuan lure on the end of his line that he had just tied on and predictably saying "only big fish need apply!" before tossing the offering out to whatever structure had prompted the switch. Jig and plug fishing is much the same - skip the fluff and go right to the big boys. And higher flows of spring beg for it. As I write this, flows are still mostly peaked, but the corner is turning, and already the hatches are thickening and trout are looking skyward. The surface feeding is picking up, wolf packs are forming on the Missouri, and my fingers are starting to itch for some fly line. Growing up a bass fisherman, there's nothing finer than the "toilet bowl flush" of a fish taking a surface bait. Trout tend to be a bit more dainty, but there's a piggishness in a hefty slurp that you can't deny.  Bring on hopper season!

I didn't always hit the weather right this spring - one wintertime trip found me in northern Montana on the water's edge in 6 degrees casting into a stiff wind. At least I can say I tried.... Another water on my list from that same trip was completely unfishable due to being frozen solid, except for where it plunged through the air and then disappeared under the shelf of ice covering the next pool. But another trip that started in the low teens turned out to be a day of bruiser trout. And other days went from sunburns to snow squalls. Spring is great - your wading boots might freeze to the rocks if you stand still too long, but you might also find yourself in a tee shirt soaking in the first warmth of the year.

There have also been a few heartbreakers among the hook-ups as well. The most prominent in my mind was a brown that ranks among the best I have ever personally seen on the end of a line. I was working a bank known to me to hold good browns. I'd already coaxed a number of solid fish from the stretch over a period of three or four trips spanning the first month of very high releases from Canyon Ferry on the Missouri. While others were focusing on the rainbow spawn, I was keying in on the little gold mine of browns I'd located. I'd

landed at least one above 20 inches from this shoreline each time I'd fished it. The last time I passed over it I was purposely standing high on the bank above it, flipping an eighth-ounce soft jerkbait-style jig along the immediately deep shoreline. The fish have been holding a rod's length or less from the bank, and my high position on the bank, easily 15 feet above the water on a near-vertical slope, gave both stealth and visibility. A long rod is key. I rolled the jig up from the depths and was darting it along the transition from visible bottom to deep green when a huge brown moved to intercept it. My mind didn't react, I took it as a matter of course. My heart
didn't race yet, and I watched the fish take the lure, thrash it like a lion with a gazelle, and then turn to mosey back where it had come from. Mechanically I went to set the hook at just the right position in his turn, but my fingers had failed to take in the slack I'd given the fish to "make his kill". The mistake meant that the hookset was made on a slack line and when the line came tight on the fish the break was instant. The brown started doing somersaults trying to toss the lure. Even before I accepted that I had broken the line, I was watching the fish fight as if he were still attached and briefly tried to convince myself there might just be more slack to gain.

But I knew what I'd done and could only watch the show beneath me as the fish rolled around in the
shallow water against the bank. It even paused for a while and held in the current in plain sight, as if taking up a new feeding lane, before it slipped back to deeper water.  I even had plenty of time to call out to my partner and say "I wish you were over here to see this." What might be trout of the year was just dancing around, and I had the time to describe out loud what I was watching before the fish went out of sight. Wish I'd thought to pull out the camera and snap a picture....

the tackle shop

I was recently in a well-known tackle shop in another town, which shall remain nameless, where I overheard a conversation between customer and salesman. The customer was new to town, about to start a new job. He wanted to spend the weekend fishing and was picking the man's brain for local information. A common enough scene. The customer was purchasing supplies for spinning gear. I'm not sure of the baits, but he had some light monofilament and a few other terminal things in his basket. The salesman was incredulous that someone should be buying such things while asking about trout streams. He pushed the shopper hard about using spinning tackle and unabashedly denounced the customer. To provide some form of an answer to the customer he described one particular stream and acknowledged that perhaps spinning techniques would work, but that fly gear would be superior. He described another famous Montana water with eloquence akin to Mark Twain's, but then shriveled his nose and said something about how spinning gear would not be effective. He rubbed harder and said that it was truly a fly fisherman's paradise. He was relentless and asked if the customer has ever fly fished. The customer said that he had three times in his life, and had been in the trees and the back of his head more than in the water. Eventually he cut the salesman off and said "Look man, I'm in town for the weekend before I start my new job and would just like to wet a line." The salesman truncated whatever he was about to say and settled on a stream, pronouncing it to be the one that would likely suit him best. The customer thanked him politely and started to walk away. The salesman called after him and said "You really need to see the light and come over here, away from the dark side. First time you catch a fish on a fly you'll be hooked! You'd rather catch one on a fly rod than fifty on your spinning gear...!" His voiced trailed off as the customer slipped away into another section of the store.

What a prick.

I had my hands full trying to herd my kids toward the door to meet a time frame to be somewhere else, but I would have liked nothing more than to have sought that customer out and given him the pointers he was looking for. I would have also put in a few good words about fly fishing as something he might like to try someday and made an effort to save the sport some face, for I'm sure that customer walked out of that store with no desire whatsoever to pick up a fly rod anytime soon - unless he felt like he was going to "have to" in order to be accepted into his new town. And the last thing he needs is to be shamed into it.

The arrogance of that salesman chaps my hide. But the mentality he displayed is far too common. It was like a radical left-wing liberal robotically spouting off about his cause with no understanding of the topic as a whole.  Any style of fishing can be done mindlessly and without skill. Fly fishing too. It doesn't take much effort to perform a basic cast - the skill is in the awareness of the surroundings, the presentation, and management of the cast once it's on the water. Same is true of any number of properly presented baits with spinning gear. Mindless casts with any gear catch fish now and then, but the guy who picks the water and all its subtle structures apart with whatever gear happens to be in his hand - using whatever the proper mix of rod length, action, line weight, lure weight, pattern, etc happens to be - now that's skill. Regardless of the gear.

I've read descriptions of services on guides' websites that recommend against spinning gear, saying that it only occasionally works on the streams they fish. It's true that when two members of the same party are fishing by different methods that a buddy system approach to the stream will be frustrating, and that is not conducive to a smoothly guided trip. But then the descriptions will go on to say something like "none of our staff use those methods anyway."  I can just hear the slight snarl as whoever typed the words lingered on the word "those."

I have a friend who likes to say that fly fishing is the best thing that ever happened to fishing - it pumps a bunch of money into the industry but virtually leaves the water untouched. As much as I love to fly fish, I tend to agree. Whoever dreamed up fly fishing was no doubt trying to figure out a way to get a weightless bait to cast. That's still where fly fishing excels in my mind. To me, that's it's purpose. Casting an otherwise uncastable bait. Presenting an otherwise unpresentable lure.  I love to float a dry fly. I like to employ nymphs. I really get into swinging a streamer. And then, I love to swing a plug. And I get an absolute kick out of bouncing jigs. On rare occasions I might toss a bait rig, but in recent years I mostly find myself doing that on steelhead water - why? Because I get a kick out of it. I love the drift. I have been known to tip a beadhead nymph with a wax worm now and again in my past. Thing is, I LOVE to fish. Love it. I'm not going to steer a guy one way or the other. I'm not going to denounce someone for choosing a method and sticking exclusively with it - unless they do so with such arrogance as to belittle the other, such as was demonstrated by the salesman I witnessed earlier. A man I would have fired on the spot had I owned the store.

The (mis) understanding

Apparently someone had stopped on the trail above me to watch me fight a fish. It was a gem of a warm winter day, a few weeks before the rainbow spawn would get underway. I got it to my feet, did a quick lift to the little tripod with my camera I'd set on the ledge behind me, and then slipped it back in the water.  I held its tail for a few seconds before it shot away, gliding over the sunlit gravel bar in full view for several yards till it reached the deep green of larger water.  As I stood to gather my things I hear "Nice fish!" from up on the bank. I look up to see a fisherman in full regalia, dressed to the nines carrying multiple fly rods with  a multitude of gadgets dangling from them and his various gear bags like Christmas ornaments.  He had so much gear I wondered if he'd camped streamside the previous night.  His posture said that he'd seen the entire show my fish and I had put on just then.  His face was of true, genuine interest and sincerity.  I thanked him heartily and waved as he moved on down the trail.  He had an air of disbelief about him, but I didn't really get the impression it had to do with the size of the rainbow he'd just witnessed me do battle with.  Perhaps I'm wrong, but I felt like it had to do more with me, or maybe the entire scene at large.  I chuckled to myself and wondered what was going on in his head.  I  absurdly imagined him being shaken by the experience and saying to himself: "I thought all spin fisherman were barbarians at the core. Surely I expected to watch him bite that fish's head off right there on the bank and gut it with his fingernails.  He didn't even bash it on a rock before lashing it to a stringer.  He let it go! And it lived!  Where was his net? Didn't know a guy could actually touch a trout. But wait, that rainbow wouldn't have even fit in the net on my back - maybe I should have sprung for a bigger one."

I think we regarded each other in equal bewilderment. I'm known to carry two rods and my share of tackle, but this guy truly looked like he'd just dropped out of the mountains after a couple weeks on the trail - except for his three rods and waders. And to him I kind of looked like one of his own - I was in waders, which very often spin fisherman are not, and my spinning rod was nine and a half feet long - likely longer than most of the rods he was carrying. I'm sure when he came around the bend to see me standing in the water with a deeply arced rod of that length, I very likely must have looked like a fly angler.  Thing is, I am a fly angler, but I very willingly blur the "lines" and fish what matches the situation best, or what suits me best, on a given water or day. This day, as is quite often the case for me on big water, I was tossing jigs on light line and reaching fish that hadn't seen any of the flies the dozen fisherman who passed by had drifted over them.  That fish had nailed my 3-inch minnow imitation with gusto as I hopped it among the rocks on the bottom 50 yards from wadable shoreline in several feet of water beneath a swift surface current.  Even the majority of the spin fisherman who may have passed by had probably just sailed a spinner over it.  Maybe some had drifted a bait rig through, which could have done the trick, but even then in my observations of the typical bait fisherman, I don't think they would have normally been out in the water picking the seams apart the way a jig can.  The bait rig may certainly have drifted through on the right path, but quite often that would have been incidental, a matter of statistics, after enough repeated casts had been made.  It's funny to me how much disdain spin fisherman and fly fisherman have for each other.  They both miss out on fabulous and very effective ways of catching fish - if they'd just trade gear for the day.  I shake my head at each camp - fly fisherman who are blinded by the pressures of maintaining eliteness and spin fisherman who are stuck in the rut of cast-and-crank. I'm sure there are plenty of folks like myself who simply love to employ the tactics they find most pleasing and most effective at the time, regardless of the gear variety, or are just up for all-out experimentation, but I don't bump into them often.

Still, I think its the "elitist" fly fishermen who give me the most entertainment, particularly those who aren't accomplished enough to be putting on airs.  They look down their nose at my spinning reel and have no idea I'd likely hold my own or outfish them with their own fly rod.  I chuckle at the 'groupie' fly fishermen every time I hit a favorite stretch of water where I often catch larger fish. It's big water, and deep. The banks are steep and fly casting is really tough. There are only a few decent spots to wade any distance from the bank, and then only if flows are low enough. Just a couple gravel bars. The fly fishermen congregate on these bars like Cubans on a raft (and I don't mind that comparison since both groups are in search of a better way of life). Then they all just stand there and beat the water to a froth, high-fiving each other whenever somebody manages to land one. It's like a prestigious men's club. All suited up in the latest gear, obligatory landing nets and purebred pooches standing by.

Some of them are without a doubt outstanding fly fishermen who are probably in their groove and are just as amused as I am. Many are probably poor souls who know no better because they bought into the lore that fly fishing was the only true way to take a trout. That's fine by me.  I don't mind walking on around the bend, away from most everybody, and searching out five pounders all by my lonesome.  And I'm sure I won't bump into the majority of them next time I break out my fly rod and put it to work on a remote stream.  Maybe I'll see that same guy again.  But I doubt he'd recognize me with a fly rod in my hands.  Although he might - if the fish is of similar proportions.

Spring (crazy) fun

April in Montana.  Everybody gets excited when it hits 60 degrees, but nobody puts their jackets away.  Parts of the state saw 70 degrees last week, but Saturday on the river found me knee-deep in water squinting through the snowflakes stinging my eyes.  It was a brutal day weather-wise.  It was 40 at dawn, the high for the day.  Not bad really, but it was windy, rainy, and snowy all day.  By the time I got back to the truck ten hours later it was hovering just above 30. Most every part of me was numb, but well worth it (although a few folks have been known to call me crazy).  These can be the best days.  The action might not always be hot, but the fish are quality.  Big rainbows are stirring as spawning urges them out of the depths.  Higher water flows get the browns motivated to cruise the eddies and stake out ambush points.  Sometimes the action is only limited by the fisherman's ability to function in the frigid, ever-changing conditions.  I like days like Saturday.  Only the serious folks are out, but the fishing is unaffected by the time of day.  On the Missouri, if it weren't for the tailwater aspect, there'd be no fishing right now.  The upper river is blown out by snowmelt.  In response, the lower river is flowing at rates double its typical stage, but the water remains clear.  Streamside trails and access points are drowned under a couple feet of water.  Wading remains essential for getting around obstacles and stepping out onto the occasional strategic boulder, although wade-fishing is mostly not an option.

I tackled Saturday's conditions with two spinning rods, each spooled with 4lb line.  I keep one holstered behind my back in my Badlands Black Jack waist pack while fishing the other. The pack is not built as a fishing pack, but I find it to be nearly perfectly suited to it.  My 9.5ft G. Loomis Bronzeback was rigged all day with various jigs.  I will always fish the lightest jig I can get away with, and on Saturday this was no less than an 1/8th ounce.  My 6.5ft Crossfire was rigged with various plugs and crankbaits, although I did take a few fish on Zig Jigs with it as well.  I switched between rods as the water dictated.  Big sweeping holes and runs found a #7 or #9 Rapala Countdown swinging through them.  Boulder pockets and distinct seams found jigs bouncing their way along their boundaries.  For the first half of the day I caught only rainbows.  The very first fish turned out to the biggest - a beautiful rainbow exceeding 26 inches that was around 8 pounds, although I'll admit I forgot to weigh it.  I

caught several other solid rainbows throughout the morning and into the afternoon.  Many on plugs, but most on jigs.

By about 2 o'clock I came to a particularly rocky shoreline framed by high bluffs.  Anyone who knows browns knows that they are likely to be caught anywhere, but they also know that quite often browns orient off a particular structure or stretch of water.  Especially if their population isn't the dominant fish in the stream - then they really tend to just occupy whatever their favorite parts of water are, much like a bass.  When you find these spots, you can often return to them time and again and expect the same results.  The same is true of smallmouth bass in rivers -once you've identified a piece of water that holds them, you can almost always find them there.

This rocky stretch was on the outside of a bend, and the swollen river was slamming into this bank.  An astute observer of my photos once pointed out to me that I often fish steep rocky edges.  It's true, even in smaller streams.  Often at the point where a fisherman typically crosses over to fish from the inside of the bend, I stay on the outside, and precariously pick my way along the edges, thoroughly working the deep pockets that are nearly impossible to keep a lure or fly in from the other side.  I do the same thing when steelhead fishing.  Poise yourself over the water in the best way possible for keeping your lure or bait in place the longest.  Casting over the current from the "convenient" side often means that your presentation will fall out of the productive holding water sooner than it should have.  Once you've hooked up, finding a place to land your catch can be the real adventure - but at least you hooked up!  My big rainbow to start the day was in just such a spot.  I descended steep rocks just to reach one eddy.  The result was a photo op that looked more like I was posing with a Coho salmon than a Montana rainbow.

My first brown was laughable.  I was tending to a nest in my reel (something not all that unusual when winding on near-tensionless jig retrieves cast after cast). My jig dangled on a rod's length of line in a few feet of water, just off the bank.  The nest of line was pulled from my fingers and up to the first eyelet as a nice little brown grabbed the jig that I must have been dangling on his nose.  I stripped it back in like a fly line and fought the fish for only a few seconds before it flopped off.  Funny, but it got me thinking as I entered that stretch of rocky bank. Turns out the browns were all holding tight to the bank on the outside of this bend.  Some were sitting on what would normally be dry ground, others were deep against the sides of vertical rock faces, but each one was an arm's length off the bank.  The second was a small one.  The third was a savage individual that slashed my jig as I raised it from the water, like a largemouth inhaling a Zara Spook.  He was a girthy fish with a lot of length, and was sitting in very shallow water over rocks that would normally be a part of the trail.  I could see the crooked lower jaw clearly on each of the next two attempts to take a bait.  I

switched lures between each cast, always giving him something different to look at.  I don't know why I was unable to connect with such an aggressive fish, but it wasn't to be, and I moved on.  I had a few chasers and a few followers, each one a brown.  By the end of the rocky stretch I'd landed only half a dozen, but two were fish exceeding 20 inches.  Both nailed a Zoom Tiny Fluke in Arkansas Shiner fished on an 1/8th ounce jig head.  A couple other smaller ones came on 1/8th ounce Glass Minnows from Kit's Tackle, also sporting a Tiny Fluke on the shank.  Unfortunately my camera batteries, including my spares, died.  I guess they'd been through too many freezings and thawings on my recent trips to the river.  I took a couple mediocre cell phone shots on an outstretched arm and one segment of video.  Normally I reach back behind me and set up a camera attached to a small tripod to capture a self portrait as I raise the fish out of the water for a pic.  It still pains me to think of the fish I released that afternoon without a decent picture.  By the time I reached the end of the rocky stretch and the river was straightening out again, I knew I was nearing the time to hike out.  But, still casting the Tiny Fluke up against the bank on a straight downstream presentation, the river had one more pig to part with before I left.  My last fish of the day was a beast of a rainbow that went 6.5 pounds on my pocket scale.  Both my first and last fish of the day were trophy rainbows.  I'll take that.  And I was more than happy to start walking the distance back to where I'd parked to try and get my body temperature back up to human levels.  My wife and I went to dinner with some friends that evening.  After hearing a few details of my long cold day in the pursuit of fish, the lady of the couple across the table quite witfully said, "This isn't the dinner date you think it its, this is an intervention."

Ten dollars for water and a beaver hole

A fishing trip is never just a trip.  There's always more.  Occasionally a trip is smooth sailing, but more often than not there is something else besides fish to make it memorable. 

As a kid I remember things happening that ranged from being stranded on a lake after burning up an outboard motor, getting tossed from the bow of the boat when the motor seized (different occasion), to losing a rack off the back of the truck that contained the coolers with the week's worth of food.

This past weekend my family and I took our first camping trip of the year.  One chore to accomplish before leaving was changing the switch that controls the water pump in our camper.   I'd had the time to take it off and match it with a replacement at a hardware store, but didn't get it reinstalled before we left.  I wasn't really concerned, I just figured I'd do it after we arrived.  It has a manual pump handle as well.  But as we wound our way up Highway 12 through the Big Belts bouncing over the frost-heave damage from the fading winter, I noticed water pouring out of the sink drain in my side mirror.  I pulled over to see what was going on and found water in the sink, but nothing else.  Maybe I'd overfilled the tank and some was sloshing out.  Never had that happen before, but I supposed it was possible.  As we crested and started down the other side, I noticed it again.  Turns out the bouncy road had taken the two pump switch wires and miraculously touched them together.  This time I found the pump running and the last few ounces of water from our reservoir spewing from the sink faucet.  Apparently the first time I stopped the wires had separated before I entered the camper to investigate.  Now, with an empty water tank - and two freshly duct-taped wires - we entered White Sulfur Springs in search of a water hose.  The hotel manager I spoke to at my first stop tried to smile away my request for water by saying  "water sure is expensive these days."  After a little more haggling we settled on me trading a ten dollar bill for a full water tank.  Once the deal was done, he softened, and seemed to enjoy the silliness of the whole situation.  "This is a first," he said.  "I've never sold water before." "Yeah," I said, "and I've never bought it from a garden hose."

The rest of the trip went well, minus the wind.  Despite the 50 degree daytime temps, the wind kept conditions brisk to say the least.  Still, we knew we were pushing our weather-luck venturing out so early in the year, and all-in-all it was a good trip.  The water was clear enough to fish and the browns that fell for my jigs ranged from 12 to 18 inches.  None of the brutes I was hoping to encounter made an appearance on this trip. But I'll find them on the next. Or the next.

In order to liven things up a little, or maybe just to escape the wind, my soon-to-be-six-year-old son decided to spelunk down a beaver hole.  He had showed it to me, and talked about wanting to go down it.  But after some discussion of how that was a bad idea, I thought the matter had been settled, and went to tinker about the camper while he continued to play around its entrance.  A short time later the alarm was raised, and I find my boy head first down the beaver hole and out of sight.  The hole was dug from the top of the bank on the flat land above the creek and plunged sharply downhill toward the water, surfacing again near the water's edge on the steep face of the creek bank.  My son was yelling something about being stuck in the hole, and I was a bit thrown off at first about where that yelling was coming from.  I climbed down the bank to find his face poking out of a root mat a foot or two above the flowing water.  It seems the burrow had taken a bit of a turn at this point and he had become wedged.  He couldn't even turn his head.  I'm not sure where his arms were.  Understandably he was a bit upset, and I was doing my best to talk him through the importance of remaining calm while I tried to do so myself.  I couldn't let him see me seem worried, and I chastised him softly for getting worked up (while making no mention of the absolutely hair-brained act of diving head first down a hole he couldn't see into that was barely bigger around than his head).  Guess he's not claustrophobic.  What had been going through his mind!?  I'm glad no critters were home, and I'm glad it had an outlet - at least he was looking at the sky and breathing fresh air.  Otherwise he was in about as good of shape as he would have been had someone rolled him up in a carpet and leaned it against a wall with his feet toward the ceiling.  I climbed up the bank, relieved that he wasn't in any danger of drowning and that he was at least immobilized until I could figure out how to extract him.  I was already more or less assuming I was going to have to dig him out.  There was no way to pull him through the direction he was going, I'd already concluded that - although like Winnie the Pooh in Rabbit's hole, it seemed a shame to waste it. The bank above him was a tangled mess of dogwood and willow.  Digging would be tough.  I peeked into the hole to see perhaps how far I'd have to dig to be able to reach his feet when I noticed the soles of his shoes at the extent to which daylight reached into the hole.  Now I went into the hole head first.  Granted I didn't really fit, but I got my head in, and one arm.  There was enough space that we could talk, and I told him I was behind him.  I groped for the feet I'd seen, but couldn't find them, and asked where his feet were.  He started kicking them up and down, and I realized I needed just a bit more reach.  A little squirming and I had hold of one ankle.  I yelled to him to close his eyes and started a steady, firm pull.  He slid with less effort than I anticipated.  Perhaps it was his slick winter coat.  He moved enough that I could now back out myself and reach in with both arms, grabbing both ankles.  A couple more hauls and he was sputtering on the surface, smeared with mud and looking the part of a chimney sweep.  We hope he's cured of his curiosity about holes. I joked with him as I dropped him off at school Monday morning, telling him to be good and to stay out of holes today.  He looked thoughtful, promised he would, and then said that he might dig a few in the sandbox at recess.  I affirmed that would be fine.

He tried his hand at fishing for a little bit after being pulled from the hole, but the wind sent him seeking shelter before long.  The next day, before leaving for home, my daughter expressed her desire to catch a fish before leaving.  She's a much more dedicated soul than my son, except for perhaps the exploration of beaver holes and Lego creations, and she laughed at the wind for messing with her casts.  She managed to catch one, and she correctly declared it her first brown trout, which she named Brownie, and decided it should be supper.  It soon took up residence in the cooler as we headed home.  There was no further incident of mention, and in the end, we all fared better than Brownie.