The Best Fishing Day of My Life

I come from a family of anglers. I, on the other hand have not historically been very good at hooking, let alone bringing in fish. That is why I’m dedicating this blog entry to the best fishing day of my life.

As you saw in the previous post, we went camping and fishing on the Gila River last weekend. It was a beautiful day and nearing evening when we walked the quarter mile or so to the river from our campsite. My mom and dad had their lines in before I even got to the water’s edge. They are so familiar with fishing they know exactly what they want to use as bait or lure and where to start casting right off.

Mike set up our poles for bottom fishing with a slider weight and hook for the night crawlers we packed in. Usually I make him impale the worm with the hook, but I guess after the trip in on horseback I was feeling rough and tough, so I baited my own. For those of you who have not experienced this- it’s not pleasant. The worm (still wiggling around) squirts out a liquid sometimes, and keeps squirming in attempts to escape. It totally grosses me out. Anyway, after my worm was on, I looked around for a place to cast.

The particular area where we stopped was pretty shallow, except for a few pooling areas. I decided that I would cast in one of the deeper areas upstream from where I stood. I threw out my line beyond the hole and slowly reeled it in as it floated back towards me. No luck on the first two tries, but on number three, I snagged a log…Or so I thought. The log (actually a fish) began to take my line upstream and fight. I was so excited that I had a fish on that I actually began to yell with excitement and jump up and down like a little kid. The battle to bring in my catch continued while my dad and Mike gave me instructions such as “tighten that drag” and “give him some line” as well as “don’t let him get under that bank with your line!” The fish surfaced a couple of times. (whether by his own efforts or mine I don’t know). This is when things got really exciting, because I saw just how BIG he was! We could also see that it was in fact a catfish, and for all intents and purposes, a lifetime record for me. Of course, as I mentioned before, it wouldn’t have taken much to surpass my other fish in size.

I reeled the lunker (as I was calling him) up to the bank where my dad got into the water and pulled him out. We estimate that my catfish was between 13-15 lbs. We took a lot of pictures and then I let him go back into the river.

After recovering from the adrenaline rush of my big catfish, I baited another hook and continued to fish in the same fashion and area. I brought in two more nice- sized catfish without more than 4 or 5 attempts/worms. I simply could not believe I was catching them! My dad had gone downstream after the first catch, so he missed seeing the others, but when he came back and saw the pictures, he was impressed with my domination of cats in his absence.



My mom, realizing that she really, really wanted a fish like what had been dragged out so far, decided to traipse across the river to the area where I was. She sacrificed the only dry shoes she brought on the trip to make it to the “sweet spot”. There were a few bites and one fish actually broke her line, but alas, not catfish. She did catch a mud sucker, though, so it wasn’t completely in vain.

The last fish we caught in that spot was another cat. I hooked it and let Cam reel it in. He was very excited, although not as excited as you’d expect for a 5 year old. He’s a seasoned fisherman by this time and casts his own line and reels his own fish in. He acted like it was just another day at the urban lake catching bluegills.

My dad returned from downstream with a nice rainbow trout. It had swallowed the hook, so he had to keep it. We kept Cam’s fish also and cooked them over the campfire at dinner time.

Other than these two, we released all the fish.

If we’re lucky, he (or she) will produce generations of fish just like my big one. If that’s the case, whoever catches them will have a good reason to take pictures, and even tell their friends about it!