FISHING ON PRIOR LAKE

My daughter, Cassie, and her husband, James,
came to Minnesota for their summer vacation in July, bringing my 2 ½ year old
grandson, Coen, who was extremely excited to spend time at Grandma’s beach on
Prior Lake to go swimming and hopefully fishing. We managed to hit great hot
summer beach weather and Coen got his wish. If you are not familiar with
Minnesota lakes, I will just mention how very clear the water is in our lakes.
From the shoreline, the small minnows swimming in their schools back and forth
can easily be seen. To a little kid this is about as good as it gets, but
unfortunately for him as soon as you walk in the water, the minnows swiftly
swim away. He, however, had great fun chasing them back and forth in the water.
I picked up a Lightning McQueen children’s fishing rod, which he thought was
pretty neat, for him to try and catch a fish from the boat. Well, it seems luck
was not on his side that day because the boat wouldn’t start. So we opted to
try fishing from the dock. Then we moved to sitting on the boat while it was
tied to the dock. Coen didn’t have any luck catching a fish from the dock or on
the boat. Usually we can see the Sunfish swimming around, and I mean full grown
fish not minnow size fish. And that day was no different. We could see them but
he didn’t have any luck, so my daughter decided to give it a try with Coen’s
Lightning McQueen fishing rod. She managed to expertly catch one almost as soon
as the bobber hit the water. She reeled in the Sunfish and pulled it into the
boat only to have Coen back away because he was afraid of the fish. He had
never seen a fish out of the water, especially not that close to him and he
wasn’t so sure he liked it. Not at all! After he calmed down, we released the
fish back into the water. So all in all, it was really a lucky day for Coen to
participate in catching a real Sunfish, my daughter to catch a fish on her
first cast, and probably the luckiest day was for the Sunfish that was released
back into Prior Lake!