My son Alex is turning 3 this month. I bought him a little spinning rod and reel last fall and he's been practicing reeling in pretend fish from the top of our stairwell ever since.

Last night I decided it was time to try to get him into some real fish. Not being a lake fisherman myself, always have fished rivers, I did a little research on the web and decided to give Lake Ballinger a try last night after work.

Dropped my DB in and started trolling small flatfish around with my electric. In between answering my sons 1000's of questions I noticed a fish jumping out where I thought our line might be. Fish on!

Grabbed the rod and handed it off. I had to help him with it some at first as he didn't quite get the concept that the thing tugging on the end of the line was a fish and he should reel it in. He kept asking "Where's the fish?", "I don't see a fish", ...

By the second fish he was all dialed in and landed it completely by himself .

We ended up losing one more and missing a bite in about 1.5hrs of fishing. Alex would have sayed out a lot longer, but I'd promised his mom to have him home by bed time.

The best fishing partners are the ones you grow yourself

Here are a few pics: