Fishing Derby 2013

It's the third year we've taken the boys to the fishing derby.  Only the second year that Grady has been old enough to participate.  We got the early time slot this year - start fishing at 8am.  The kids have an hour and a half to catch as many as two fish each.

Peter's age has to do the fishing on their own.  Behind a fenced off area from the adults.  Grady as a preschooler still gets one adult behind the fence with him.

The boys have been talking about the fishing derby for ages.  Peter's been thinking about wanting a fishing pole of his own.  (They have loaner poles at the derby, so you don't need your own.)  Grady's been talking about actually staying to catch two fish instead of just one.

Grady woke up this morning saying "I had a dream that we were at the fishing derby and they let you catch as many fish as you want.  I caught five."

We got there early and had to get in line.  They don't let you start until right at 8am.  We found some friends and tried to stick together a bit.  This year, Grady decided that I should stay with him.  So Boris was in charge of the camera and making sure Peter made it to the right area.

Grady and I got out there and it took about 10 minutes for Grady to get bored.  He hadn't caught a fish yet and he started asking me to hold his fishing pole.  The grass was wet, so we really couldn't sit down but he ended up sitting on my legs as I squatted (which gets tiring really fast).  I think it was 20-25 minutes in when Grady finally got a fish.  He was pretty excited, but he didn't figure out what was happening right away.  He definitely didn't want to hold it or touch it this year.

Once his first fish was bagged up, he said "I'm done, we can go now".  He didn't want to spend any more boring time waiting to see if he'd get a second fish.  As we walked out, the man with the microphone looked at Grady's fish and asked where Grady was from.  Grady started to say something, then stopped and said "I can't say".

Grady and I walked over to watch Peter and we were able to see him catch his second fish.  From the pictures that Boris took, it looks like Peter was having a pretty good time.  I don't know if he was getting bored.  I forgot to ask him if he liked the standing around part, or just the "getting a fish" part.

Peter had a specific narrative in his head of what should happen this year at the fishing derby.  He definitely wanted to get his fish weighed, because they give out prizes for the biggest fish.  (We didn't weigh them last year because they looked pretty small to me and I didn't want to stand in line).  But he also wanted to tell the man with the microphone about his fish.  He had a screw up a bunch of courage to go talk to him today, but he did it.  The man looked at his fish and commented on how nice they looked, then he asked Peter where he was from.  Peter answered (into the microphone) "Nevada".  The man thought it was pretty cute and said "what do you know, I'm from Nevada too!".

Peter's two fish weighed a total of 12 oz together.  Grady's one fish weighed 13 oz.  We stood in line to get the fishes heads cut off and gutted.  The boys both closed their eyes and/or turned away as the man took care of the fish.  We had other stuff to do before we made it home today, so the fish weren't kept on ice and I didn't feel comfortable cooking them and eating them after that.  Luckily, the boys didn't say anything about us not having eaten them this year.

They also had a casting contest for the kids.  They got five tries to throw the fishing pole line out (with something like a superball on the end) and they got points and prizes based on how far they got it.  The boys both got a bag with some prizes and a juice.

Peter did it on his own and told me "even though I didn't get it very far, the guy gave me some points because I tried my hardest".

Grady got some help from Boris and together they still didn't get very far.  It'll be something to practice for next year.

We went to the street fair in downtown Minden after the fishing derby.  The boys played in the bounce houses for a little while, we had popcorn and there were a bunch of old cars to look at.  I think the boys were both pretty happy with how the day went.