I took my 7(almost 8) year old daughter out fishing yesterday on a Tillamook area stream. Just the two of us. She was pretty amped to get out and fish with daddy. We stopped at Ron's store in Hebo and he mentioned that if she brought in a fish he'd take a picture and make her famous. After that she REALLY wanted to catch a steelhead so she could get her picture taken. After fighting through the boats we finally arrive in an unmolested hole that I knew had fish in it cuz we caught 2 out of there the day before.
First time through the hole didn't produce so I rowed back up to the top, changed plugs and ran back through. She had no sooner put the rod in the rod holder when down it went. "FISH ON" I hollered and she jumped and grabbed the rod like she had been doing it for years and started throwing some serious whoop a$$!!!!! I eased the boat over and gave some verbal direction while she fought that fish. I had an inkling by the size it might not be a keeper and so was not surprised to see it had all of its fins. I have never before been even slightly disappointed to catch a wild fish but I was hoping to take it home for her. It wound up being a chrome bright hen about 11#. Not a bad start. I netted it(bad I know but what can you do with a 7 year old manning the rod) and popped the hooks out. I held it up long enough for her to touch it and gently set her in the river till she was ready to swim away.(the fish, not the kid)
We made one more pass through there but found nobody else home. We floated down aways and were in a hole that had never produced anything but spent fish for me so my mind was wandering a bit when down went the rod I would have least expected!! That fish was on it so hard that Abby couldn't get the rod out of the holder. I jumped up and got it for her and the fish put on some acrobatic displays so I could see it was bright and about the right size. I thought "oh boy, we're in" Well, she gets the fish up close and I can see this one too has all of its fins.
Again we had to release it but I think Abby was pretty ok with that though she still wanted to take one home.
The rest of the drift was pretty uneventful as far as fish goes but we'd pull over and she really enjoyed tossing the jig rod and got pretty good at it too. She wanted me to go up and make another loop down the river but I didn't think her mom would appreciate that since I had told her I only planned to fish till noon or so and it was almost 2:30 by this point. I think I've added another addict. :grin:
[ 12-29-2001: Message edited by: RichH ]</p>
RichH
First Steelhead
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