Saturday and Sunday Fishing Report: Messing About In Boats

"There's nothing...absolutely nothing...half so worth doing as simply messing about in boats." So says Ratty to Mole in The Wind In the Willows. Turns out it was true for us this weekend. I went out Saturday with Jeremiah, then with Lidia on Sunday.
Jeremiah had lost swimming privileges for a couple of days--better ask him about that--so he had some free time while Kim and Isaiah went to the pool.
It was HOT, but there were some trout jumping in the shade of these trees. But, though we tried various types of flies and techniques--for the brief time before Jeremiah got bored--and even though we had a couple of hookups that we lost in the weeds, catching trout soon slid way down on the priority list for this trip.

That's OK; I can handle that.

So we just started paddling around and messing about. Jeremiah has a strong paddle stroke, and likes to go fast. We went through the channel--deep now, with big rocks in view below--to the little pond at the very south end.

There Jeremiah asked to have the anchor at his end of the canoe. He made cool ascending fountains of bubbles as he heaved the anchor overboard, and found creative and fun uses for the weeds that came up with the anchor.

Finally it was too hot, and we decided to head into a nearby town for a cold drink on the way home. Jeremiah once again wanted to haul everything up from the canoe himself.

Self-portrait of a kid who actually had fun not catching fish:

The same was true for Lidia. The day was hot again, but very unsettled, with storms building in the west. When we got there, though, the water was calm.

Once again some fish were working, but once again we caught nothing.

Well, that's not exactly true; we caught a moth.

We saw something fluttering in the water and paddled over. Lidia scooped it up with the net and then held it--and let it crawl around on her--while its wings dried.

"There it goes!" she shouted suddenly, and, sure enough, I looked up and saw it flying high and heading for land. Lidia was quite proud to have saved its life.

Later we saw a turtle liesurely swimming along the surface, and Lidia grabbed the net and directed my paddling to bring her right up on him; but he saw us too soon and crash dived. The rest of the time Lidia was more interested in looking for turtles than trout.

That's OK; I can handle that.

Inevitably, the wind shifted to the north and increased in intensity, and a rain cloud loomed over us, so we reeled in one rod--Lidia is trying to catch the fly in the wind in order to put it in the hook-keeper--and trolled the other one back to shore.

We unloaded and loaded and headed for the valley.

We stopped along the way to take some shots of the gorgeous eastern sky, and commune with some cows.

But we didn't tarry; the rain was right on our heels.

I still find myself disappointed that the kids aren't catching fish. But I'm realizing--I admit, slowly, grudgingly--that's my agenda. So I vow next time to try real hard to make our top priority just some good messing about.

(You never know, maybe that will get the trout to bite.)