Yesterday Fishing with Daughter and an Unusual Catch.

I Took my daughter out for 2 hours last night before sunset. Up till now I have always casted for my kids and then let them reel it in or watch the bobber or what have you; however, my daughter is going on 8 years old so I figured she was well old enough to do it herself.
I figured she should practice the mechanics before we actually got on the water so I got her poll ready and told her to go get her hula hoop from the shed. I wanted her to be able to see where her lure was landing so I clipped on a yellow float 12" from the end or her line. I cut the hook off of a 1/32 oz. jig and tied that on under the bobber.
Well I showed her the basics of casting and sat down in my lawn chair and watched her make about 50 casts from about 25 feet from the hula hoop. By the time she was done she was getting 3 and 4 casts in a row where the bobber was landing inside the hoop! As things turned out that was practice well spent as a few hours later we in the water next to a lay down where I had caught a bunch of pan fish with my four year old the day before.
I cringed when she let her first cast fly as I was certain she would be over excited and send it sailing into the branches. Nope, it landed 2 or three feet from the branches! We fished for an hour and a half or so and she only got hung up in the tree once! We both ended up with 4 fish each I think. She had all gils and I had 3 gills and 1 crappie. It was a great feeling watching her cast, set the hook and reel in her own fish.
An amazing thing also happened (well to me anyway) while we were fishing. She got her jig snagged on something on the bottom and I told her to give me her rod so I could try to pop it loose. After a few whips of the rod tip, the jig came flying out of the water and landed between my legs. I could hardly believe what I saw. On the hook, was her yellow gulp minnow, and a second yellow gulp minnow. Wait, I looked at my own jig... yep, my yellow gulp minnow was still on my hook. She caught a gulp minnow! Looked like the darn thing just came out of the jar! Now I was at this tree yesterday with my son so it probably was a minnow we had lost (but I don't remember losing one).
Well, that is certainly the strangest thing that has happened to me while fishing...

Great post Chris! Gotta love it when the kids catch on to the techniques like that. That is some coincidence with the minnow?

Yea, i have to admit, the minnow thing had me freaked out for a few seconds :-)

I am going to have to dig up an old photo now.

When I was a kid, I had a casting plug (plastic weight practice) attached to an underspin with a trigger. I used to sit in a lawn chair and cast into a small kiddie pool. I think the picture shows me in the lawn chair and one of my sisters cat playing with the weight. If I remember correctly, I used to cast it out and let the cat chase it back. Great practice and a good idea I forgot about. My daughter is eight and I think I might just employ the hula hoop idea.

Thanks!