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"Will you take me fishing Grandpa?" My 8 year old grandson Ben had been asking me to take him with me to the lake for almost a year. Tomorrow would be that day! He was so excited about going to the lake with me that I knew it would be hard for him to sleep tonight. I'll admit I was a little excited too! What better thing could a grandfather do for his grandson than to take him on a fishing trip; the male bonding thing! I was already giving myself the Grandfather of the Year award. Morning arrived and it was beautiful. God must have really meant for this day to be something special. It was a gorgeous morning; with a Robin's egg blue sky and small cirrus clouds drifting across the sky. I'd loaded the boat the night before with tackle boxes, rod and reels and an ice chest. We filled our carry cups with coffee and hot chocolate and headed out the door. We'd hooked the trailer to the back of the truck the night before and now we were on our way to the lake. Across from the boat landing where we would launch the boat, there was a store that masqueraded as a gas station/convenience store/ café/ tackle shop. For the fisherman it was a great place to visit and spend lots of money! They had everything one would ever need to stock a tackle box, grab a couple of sandwiches and fill up the gas can for the outboard motor. After we filled up the bait bucket with crickets, we drove across the road to the boat dock. After launching the boat and pulling the trailer into the appropriate parking spaces, we were ready to move down the lake to a spot where I had caught a lot of blue gills the year before. While I knew that Ben could swim, due to all the hours spent in the community pool, I still strapped around him a smaller version of my own life vest. We were fishing for blue gill bream. They were bedding and with the mirror smoothness of the water, we would be able to see those beds from our boat. They wouldn't be very deep because bream spawn in very shallow water. Bedding, or spawning fish are easy to catch, if you can get a fish hook anywhere near those beds. I cut the engine and drifted toward a little cove I recognized from the year before. Sure enough, before me there were dozens, if not hundreds of the small hubcap sized circles scooped out of sandy clay bottom of the lake. I moved within casting distance of the beds. My grandson was anxious to get his hook into the water, snatching his rod and reel out of its holder even before I could get the boat anchored. This is where the fun begins, I thought as I began showing my grandson how to cast the spinning outfit I had given him. Having grown up with Game Boys and cartoons 24 hours a day, showing him something new was difficult; he thought knew everything there was to casting a bait 30 feet out into the water. He cast and the bait with bobber flew about 10 feet straight up into the air and landed in the boat. No problem! On the next cast the cricket only sailed 3 feet from the boat. He was getting impatient. By now he was more attentive and after I explained how the reel worked, he began to improve upon his casting. I let him practice casting the bait off the side of the boat that was not near the bream beds. On his first cast with a cricket, the bobber went under almost as soon as the bait hit the water. He brought the large bluegill into the boat. It was a beauty! This was the first of many fish we caught that day, but he'll always remember that first fish. It wouldn't have mattered how big it was, it was the first fish he had ever caught all by himself. He wouldn't forget it and neither would I.
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