In Which I Become Gary For A Day

The weekend was fairly fun. In a rare moment I got to act MANLY! It is very rare that you will see me doing manly things. Fixing stuff? Not so much. I even snickered at another guys unmanly comments. It was a lot of fun.

The boy child decided that he wanted to go fishing this weekend. Since it was like eighty degrees out. I had my doubts that fish would be very active but he had his heart set on it. I sort of suck as a dad lately so I try and do a few special things every once in a while.

Off we went to the fishing store. Some other dork was there with his dork spawn. He says "I hardly ever fish I am not sure what bait I should get, worms right?". I snickered as I went for the manly live fish bait. I may have even grunted at him. Honestly I am pretty much a fishing n00b and do not know what I am doing. However I can pretend since I have done this a few times before.

We went to the pond and hooked up our fishing rods. Put the little fish on the line and proceeded to fish. We had a pretty good time. My rod actually is fucked up and needs to get fixed. So we mostly shared his.

Actually I figured out the rod was messed up on my first catch. Imagine this. I cast my fish into the water. I am watching the bobber. It dinks. It dunks. WHAM! It goes under the water! I have a fish! I start reeling it in. It is putting up a fight. My line then tangles and jams. Something is messed up in the reel mechanism. So my son is like "DAD! JUST PULL IT OUT!".. So I back up like 100 feet to the street and STILL it is not out of the water! So I pick up the slack and get closer then I grab the fishing line and pull it out of the water. Success! I had hooked the first Pickerel of the day. Hell I did not even cut my hands on the line. Although I did run a hook through my finger later in the day while putting the bait fish on.

The day proceeded. The mosquitoes came out. Massive swarms of them. Crazy. The fish stopped biting. In about a 1/2hr period we caught three pickerels of various sizes then nothing. It was a fun time.

The kid really wanted a bass. I am not sure if any bass exist in the pond anymore. Every year we have a fishing derby. The town stocks the lake full of bass and other fish. I have no idea how many survive to the next year.

All of the fish were returned to the lake. First off I am not much of a cook. Secondly the Charles River has a long history of heavy metal dumping and especially mercury. No way am I eating anything that lives in there.

While we were there we also saw some beautiful hawks. One landed on a telephone wire right next to us. It was a really amazing creature.

So ends my tale of manliness. My one day of nerd transformed to hunter gatherer.