Fishing with my, Dad.

This past weekend we had decided to have my Dad come out to our rustic log cabin in the woods. We were hoping that getting him out of town and out of his apartment in the city would be the ideal break he needed and, a memorable change in scenery. Within twenty minutes of leaving Winnipeg we drove into a wall of pounding rain. Each Friday we have had either rain or snow on our way to the lake. There is a lot to be said for consistency, I suppose.

However, Saturday was a brand new day and it started off with sunshine and not a cloud to be seen on the horizon. This was an instant boost for each of us. After an early breakfast we sauntered to our shoreline to tackle one of the endless chores on our "to do" list, burning brush that had accumulated from clearing our path for stairs later this year. With the high winds it felt cooler than the plus sixteen degrees Celsius.

Going fishing was our plan for the afternoon and off we went. The sunny day filled our spirits with hope and promise for the post-spawn bite of our Provincial fish, the Walleye. Within fifteen minutes of our arrival my father landed the first, a whopping twenty-four inch brute. Like a light switch, we now were hitting a fish with each drift. Four for four, my wife followed up with another twenty-four incher and finally on the fourth pass we had our first stringer fish. On our fifth pass, I landed a chunky Northern Pike over thirty inches. The next two passes were also more large Pike and the Walleye action ended as quickly as it had started. We worked our river for the next two hours and we finished our day with ten fish caught in three hours. The count was Irma at six, my Dad at two and two for myself. I was the only one without reeling in another Walleye.

As we sat around our campfire in the evening I was the target for the trash talk because of blanking in the Walleye department. My wife continues to out-catch, out-fish me. Not a good start to the season. Reflecting by the dancing flames of the fire I had come to the realization the last time I had gone fishing with my Dad was about thirty-five years ago on the west shores of Lake Winnipeg. I'm glad to have had this weekend with my father and I know he had an excellent adventure with his family as he couldn't stop talking about his time on Bird River with a function we had to attend on Sunday. If you haven't done so lately, take a parent fishing and don't wait as long as I did.