Ice Fishing

Ben has been wanting to go ice fishing for a while now. He's finally old enough that I thought he would be able to handle the cold and potential boredom so we planned a trip with Grampy Snow and on Sunday, Jan. 17, we headed up to Moosehead Lake. I woke Ben up at 5a.m. and got him dressed and into the back seat of the Explorer so we could meet my dad in Newport. I figured he would sleep most of the way, but the excitement was too much and he was awake and talkative for most of the ride. We got to the lake around 8:30 and put on our snowshoes and started walking. At first he didn't seem to keen when he saw how far we had to walk to get to the island where we would set up camp for the day but I kept him going and hoped that he might still have some fun. I didn't have to worry. Before we even got all our traps set, we had our first flag of the day and had pulled up a small brook trout. Ben was hooked for the rest of the day. We continued to get flags and eventually caught 7 fish and kept 4 (2 brook trout and 2 lake trout). The walk out took a bit longer than the walk in but we made it back to the truck around 3:30 and Ben was asleep before we even got back to Greenville. When we got home, he told his mother it was the best day of his life. I don't know why I was so worried that he wouldn't have fun. But I'm glad we went and expect we will get out there again this year, hopefully with an auger next time though!