At this event, sponsored by Lone Pine Nursery, they were entered into drawings for door prizes. Whoever caught the biggest fish would also win a bike! The kids baited their hooks with bits of cheese, got set, and when the announcer said, "Start fishing!" they cast their lines into the water.
Within 15 minutes Abby had caught two nice fish! She reeled in her rainbow trout and brought them up to be measured. One was 16 inches, the other 16.5 inches. What a catch! The limit was 2 fish, so she was done for the day. Well, not quite done... when they called the winners from the first door prize drawing, she had won a prize! A new paint-by-numbers kit.
Augie waited about an hour until he finally got his fish hooked. Those fish were biting, but not staying! Finally he hooked a biggie--a fish so heavy he could barely reel it out of the pond. Grammy took over and hauled that fish onto shore. It turned out to be a 17 inch Rainbow! However, Augie said, "I don't want to touch it!" So in his picture Grammy had to hold the fish in front of him to even get it in the shot.
Augie had a good-sized fish, but unfortunately some other kids had bigger 18 to 18.5 inch ones. Soon it was hot and the fish weren't biting anymore. They packed up their gear and called it a day.
Back at home, Grammy and the kids proudly showed off their catch to Mom. Everyone oohed and aahed over the nice fish. Then came the hard part. Someone had to clean the fish. Grammy didn't want to. Abby and Augie wouldn't dream of it. Mom had never caught a fish in her life. Dad was at work. So Mom took the fish over to our good friends' house, Dave and Sandy Heeding. Dave's a great fisherman, but he was gone. So Sandy, with help from her son Robert and texts of advice from her son Ben, guided Mom through all the steps of gutting fish. (Yes, it was an experience I didn't really enjoy, but now I can say I know how to do it.) Then the fish went in the freezer.
A few days later, Mom said we had to make these fish feel like they'd fulfilled their purpose. These fish were going to be dinner. Unfortunately, by this time no one wanted to eat the fish. But I, Mom, persevered.
I cut off the tails...
and looked up recipes for how to cook fish (do you take off the scales? pull out the bones? No. Just throw them in some flour/salt/pepper mixture and fry? okaaay... where's the butter... ).
So I fried them up on one side...
Then fried them on the other. The skin was nice and crispy and was actually my favorite part. I served the fish with baked potatoes. I got mixed reactions. Augie refused to even eat a bite. I said, "You must eat at least one bite! You're the one who caught it." So he put a piece in his mouth, gagged and made faces, and ate one bite. Abby claimed that even the look would make her sick. But she ate a tiny sliver of fish. Jim and I picked at our fish, seeing as we had a whole fish each, and although they had lots of bones and it was slow-going, we ate them (mostly) up. They weren't too fishy-tasting, but rather bland and tasteless (except for the crispy, buttery skin). Sam was gone camping but when he got home he ate half a fish and loved it.
This is what was left of our fish dinner. Some skin and bones and a potato peel. Overall, I think it was an excellent experience for first-time fisher-kids and a first-time fish-cooking mom. You know the old expression? "Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime." Well, that's only true if the man (or mom, in this case) knows how to cook the fish so that it will actually get eaten!
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