Fishin' in the Dark

I went fishing today. That may not sound like much of an accomplishment, but for someone who hasn't been fishing in about ten years, it was an event. I wasn't very good; in fact, I actually did more of what Amanda calls "pole castin'" since I couldn't even cast my pole correctly. I had tons of fun though! Here's how the adventure went...

When Kendra and Amanda go fishing, they go out to our friend Steven's residence. He lives about fifteen minutes outside town (kind of like I do at home) and there is a stock tank out there full of catfish and perch. First, however, Kendra had to bribe Steven into letting us come out. This, of course, led to the making of homemade cinnamon rolls at midnight on Thursday night. This, as always, was fraught with misadventure, but cooking just isn't the same if everything goes as planned. The rolls turned out well in the end, and we even had a sampling that night.

Well, Friday evening, we rendezvous at Kendra's, and load up poles, tackle boxes, cinnamon rolls, icing (which Kendra had dyed purple for some inexplicable reason), Girl Scout cookies and people. Then, we head to Jonathan's house to pick him up. Jonathan uses a wheelchair, so we had to unload and reload into his van before proceeding to Steven's place. We were so close to having everything go without a hitch when Dex realized that there was not much gas in the van, and we needed to stop. Being the directionally challenged group that we are, we went all the way to Navasota to get gas, rather than going to the closest gas station.

An hour after leaving, we finally get to Steven's. We have our cinnamon rolls and some laughs and then head to the tank. Everybody gets their poles baited and then the mayhem begins. Jonathan, Dex, and Steven all caught fish at the same time, but Steven's swallowed the hook and I had to jump on it and put it out of it's misery (as a result, I now have fish residue on the bottom of my shoe). I threw out about six casts and never even got my hook in the water, so I gave up and just enjoyed the outdoors and the entertainment.

Amanda has been having a hard time catching anything lately, and it didn't look promising when the first thing that she caught was a misplaced sock. When she did finally catch a nice catfish, she didn't want to touch it and made Steven get it off of her pole. Of course, this opened her up for all sorts of ridicule, and Steven ended up whacking her in the face with her own fish...no lie, it was pretty hilarious! She then curled up and went to sleep right there on the ground.

At one point, Kendra caught a big catfish and as she and Steven were unhooking it, they started a very comical fish fight. Kendra got the fish, threw it at Steven, and hit him square. It was actually very impressive. Of course, Steven now had possession of the fish, and threw it at Kendra. During her effort to escape, she ran away, tripped over a branch, and fell down. On the bright side, she avoided being hit with the fish until Steven fish slapped her on the way back to the tank. They then proceeded to throw the traumatized fish back into the tank.

No one caught anything after that. We think we may have been catching the same fish repeatedly all evening, and after swallowing one hook and being used as a weapon it had had enough. So we loaded up and took everyone home, which did not take an hour the second time around, although there were some funny challenges along the way. All in all, it was certainly an exciting evening, and I was glad to have it. All of that laughter just puts me in a good state of mind and I always feel so relaxed afterwards. Just goes to show that laughter really is the best medicine.