I took my 2 1/2 year old daughter to a local retention pond on Sunday from 1-4. We used an ice fishing teardrop jig with Berkley Gulp waxworms under a float and nailed a bunch of nice gills, a decent crappie, and a couple small bass. She got her first case of bass thumb - she got scraped up as she tossed the first fish back. 2 or 3 fish later she was back to holding them again.
Then, on Wednesday, I pick her up from the babysitter, and she wants to go fishing again. So we head back to the same pond, this time with the flyrod. The weeds there are matted thick up to 20 ft. out. A red and black foam beetle was the ticket in the glass-like water in a corner. Crappies and gills loved that beetle. Crappies were very dark, and the gills had very fat bellies. We didn't leave that corner until the beetle was lost to a fish that got caught in the weed mat. I switched over to a couple small hoppers with much less success, so we started to move around a bit. Not much happened until we were about to leave at 8pm, a really nice size bass took the hopper, but I didn't get a good enough hookset with my 3wt, and the hook popped out trying to pull the bass through the weeds. This was the first time she got to pull fish with the flyrod. She had fun.
She wanted to go again last night. The wind was a lot stronger, so I left the flyrod in the car. This time we went with a small jig head and Gulp minnow under a float on the other side of the pond. Lots of gills, a couple crappies, and small bass this time. Action was less consistent that yesterday. We had to keep moving to catch fish.
Each night on the drive home she'd sing songs about how she likes to go fishing with her daddy. Love it.
I might post some pics if I get a chance.
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