3.6 A Day to Always Remember

  A Day to Always Remember

Back to the more simple times in 2012. It was around 8:30 am and I got waken from a great time asleep up from a call on the house phone from my Grandpa Cal. I was home alone since both of my parents were at work on the summer day. Grandpa Cal asked me "Would ya wanna go fishin with the old fart and catch that big one you always wanted to catch." Little did he know that it would be the other way around. I said of course I want to go fishing, I'll run down the street in 10 minutes. I got my day started. I got ready as fast as I could because going fishing with my grandpa was one of my favorite things to do in the summers. 

We got everything packed that we needed about 20 minutes later. There was one thing I was missing, which was food. So, on the way to the lake, we ended up getting McDonald's.Nothing like a Mcdonald's breakfast.Which13 years old is not down to eat fast food early in the morning.  Grandpa Cal ended up getting a coffee and managing to spill it by the time we took the first turn. Let's just say I cannot repeat what he said. We got to the lake and got all situated. The weather was the feeling of a perfect light breeze to keep the bugs off of you. We were finally off onto the lake for the day.

Grandpa Cal said hold on a second so we went right next to the boat landing and he started messing around with the motor. We were going about trolling motor speed (5mph) and I was dangling my line off the back end of the boat. I was just watching the line and the next thing you know a northern jumped out of the water about 3 feet and snagged my bait out of mid-air. Grandpa Cal had never seen anything like it before but the line ended up snapping. I was upset about it because I had never caught a northern before since I was young and the fish was half the length of my height. That incident happened for a total of 2 seconds but that is not it. He told me he wanted to try to fly rod fish around this area for a little bit so we did. He finally got the bait to the spot he wanted and all you heard was a huge splash and his line was as tight as a kite. A fly rod does not have a reel to just reel in a fish you have to work at it for a while and it takes time. He had never caught a large fish on such short notice and with the equipment, we had for that situation, it was not looking good. I had to steer the boat around with the trolling motor to basically chase the fish around until it got tired. Which the fish took about 40 minutes to get tired. In the end, Grandpa Cal pulled in the fish. It was a large northern and he had never caught anything like it on a fly rod before. He also did it on the first cast. This is a day I will never forget because so many small things happened that day and it kept getting better.