Ice Fishing Derby, Day 1

Can you tell I got my new camera!?!

We had a crazy, busy, fun day today. It started with the annual ice fishing derby. This was the first time the kids had gotten to go. I was playing with my new camera which arrived late last night via UPS, and I haven't had a chance to read all the directions, so I'm sure there is a setting that does better in the snow than what I've managed to take here, but either way, here we go.

This is a zoomed-in picture of my six year old, who was at least 30 yards away at the time. You can see me in the reflection of his glasses, on the right side.

The two year old absolutely loved fishing. He was sharing a pole with me, and kept saying "Hold it, PLEASE, PLEASE." Then he would hold the pole for at least half an hour. He even knew to jig the pole from watching everyone else. Then he would give me the pole, let me jig it about three times, and then want it back again. He literally fished more than I did.

Here's my sweet husband, trying to catch a fish.

I had to include this one. There was only one time in the day - early morning, when everything was new and a little bit scarry - when the two year old was in a bad mood. The funny thing was that I had just discovered that my camera has a setting called "smile catcher," and I was on that setting when this picture was taken. Don't you think that's ironic? By the way, a few pretzels cured the bad mood.

And a little relaxation in the sun didn't hurt either. He was pretty tired. This was right before lunch time, and he almost fell asleep here. The kids and I had to leave right then to get the six year old to ski practice for the afternoon. This one fell asleep on the way, but when we got back to the lake, he became the main fisherman, holding the pole most of the afternoon. He also loved the ice dipper, which we used to pull the slush out of the holes. He would tell us "dip it, dip it!" He wanted to play with it, but I was afraid he could fall through the hole, or drop the dipper, so I held onto it with him. Later we let him "dip the snow." He also had a hard time understanding where the boat was. He kept looking at the snowmachines, and saying, "boat?". He hadn't been on a snowmachine before either, and it was noisy, so it scared him.

The six year old had been so excited to go fishing. But then he wouldn't leave the line in the water more than 15-20 minutes or so. He got bored easily. He really just wanted to go skiing. In fact, after we had been there about half an hour, he wanted me to take him to the ski hill early. I told him he had to wait. He spent more time eating pretzels and mooching granola bars than fishing :)

Here's a three generational shot of the fishermen. From left to right: Bugga (my mother in law), my husband, and the six year old. Papa was fishing off to the right, far enough away that I couldn't get all of them in one shot. The overflow was pretty bad in this spot. I even broke through up to my knee in one spot, while I was walking over to the fishing spot. (That was from overflow -the water that is above ice level. It had refrozen the snow and was crusty, but my foot broke through in one spot. Brought back memories of the first time I went ice fishing. My husband (before we were married) took me to Half Moon Lake. I was already really nervous about being out on the ice, sure I was going to die, and wouldn't you know it? I got off the snowmachine, and took a few steps, and one whole leg fell through the ice. I was sitting on the ground with my leg submerged, working myself into a full panic. Needless to say, we did not fish that day :)

Here's Papa with the only fish we caught this weekend. This poor little fish is only about 8 inches long, and Papa snagged it through the belly.

This is what most of my afternoon looked like. I found that I had to sit on his left side if I didn't want to get hit in the face with the pole when he jigged.

It was a really beautiful day. A couple times I was even able to take off my coat and sit with short sleeves. We all got mild sunburns too.

Note... since I'm updating this after the fact, I'll tell you that day two was nice too - warm, but snowy. In fact I took a book along, and wasn't able to read it at all because there was a constant very wet snow, sometimes pretty heavy. No fish, but we did well in the door prize department, which you can read about in the next post :)