Fishing Part 1

We went fishing today with some friends to Redcliffe Jetty for a couple of hours which was great fun. I had bought the kids fishing lines in January and took them to Moreton Island however we didn't get the opportunity to fish because of all the rain. As an adult you usually learn that fishing means spending time trying to catch a fish and enjoying the outdoors, not necessarily catching fish even though you throw your line into the water for a few hours. Before we left James asked if I could cook the fish for dinner tonight and I said, it's hard to catch fish but fishing is about enjoying the time trying to catch fish. Trying to put some reality into the situation without being totally negative. To an 8 year old if you say you are going fishing one would expect to catch fish other wise why would you do it. I just didn't want him to be too disappointed if we didn't catch any fish.

It was extremely windy and I had told the kids to wear a hat that wasn't their favourite hat in case it flew off and landed in the water (speaking from experience when James was very little we lost his Spiderman hat over off this very jetty and he was devastated). I, on the other hand wore my one and only favourite hat which sits low on your head and I know it's tight not like a cap which sits loose on your head. I nearly lost it a couple of times and I was throwing a hand line in for Sienna and as soon as I tossed the line in I decided I was going to take my hat off and put it away. Well I was 10 seconds too late and it flew off my head into the water and there was nothing I could do about it. Actually it was a hat that I had bought from the Farmers Markets some years ago and I haven't seen them around since. I naturally was making a song and a dance about losing my favourite hat when Sienna piped up and said "Mum I thought you told us not to wear our favourite hats so we wouldn't loose them". Ummm very true... what's that old saying, "do as I say, not as I do". Next time I'll have to take my own advice and I'm very sad my favourite hat is gone as I find it hard to get a hat to look okay and I'm not that into caps myself.

Now back to the fishing story, we didn't catch any edible fish, James caught a little baby blow fish (poisonous) and some bloke helped us get it off the line and threw it back in the water. He said they were only poisonous if you ate them but you could touch them. A few blokes had crab pots and while we were there caught 3 crabs, all female so they had to throw them back in the water as it's illegal to catch females as they need to breed. It was a fun afternoon so on the way home I ended up buying fish and chips for dinner since we didn't exactly have "a catch of the day".