So my daughter comes home from college the other day and one of the first things she says is “Daddy will you take me fishing?” I make a note of the ‘daddy’, she may look like a young woman but she’s still my little girl. Sunday we head out to the lake, I rig the rods up and wonder if the fish are going to prefer silver or gold, I gave her gold and I took silver figuring if one did worse than the other I’d just change it. She’s not a real girly girl but she doesn’t like to handle the worms, no big deal I can do that, so worms on and outfits over the side. I look back into the face of my sweet little girl and I see she has her game face on, I forgot how competitive she is! Twitch twitch, I remember the fish always seem to like it when you give the rod tip a little twitch, I should remind her of that, twitch twitch, I wonder where she gets her competitiveness from, twitch twitch, her mom isn’t very competitive, twitch twitch, oh well I’m sure she’ll remember the twitch on her own. Ten minutes later she has a hatchery trout on, I didn’t know they had planted the lake yet. She lets me know that the score is 1-0. We circle around the spot several times and I pulled ahead, 2-5, her timing seems to be a little off on the hook set but her gold one seems to be getting more bites, if she gets the timing down better she’ll mow me over! I decide to make a tactical change, off goes my silver one and on goes a gold one, an exact duplicate of hers, there’s no stopping me now, she’ll never keep up. Two hours later and she’s caught so many fish I’ve lost count and I haven’t had a single bite! The same outfits, I’m rigging both our worms, I study how much line she’s letting out and duplicate her every move but I cant get even a single bite. She’s rubbed my nose in it as much as she can and now all that’s left is to challenge me to a bet, a foot rub for who ever catches the next fish. It’s my only chance of winning something, so in desperation I agree to the bet, it’s just gotta be my turn to catch something. A few minutes later and I feel a little guy tap tapping on my worm, I wait for the take and then wham set the hook, fish on! I’ve just yelled my first hoop and I’m starting my holler when I realize she’s just cranked the engine on full speed, I try to reel in my fish before the boat picks up to much speed but it’s to late, the fish is gone. As I look back at her I see her face with a very happy and surprised look on it, the burst of speed has persuaded a fish to take her worm and it managed to hook itself, she wasn’t even holding her rod! My mind is racing, the water, is it too cold to accidentally push her in? My knife, I could cut her line as I try to net it for her. But it’s to late she has the fish in her hand and tells me she’ll take her foot rub tonight after dinner. I forgot how much I love fishing with her.
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