National Hunting and Fishing Day

Today was National Hunting and Fishing Day.  Last year, we went to Grandview and spent the morning doing a variety of fun activities, ate a quick lunch, and then stayed for the fishing derby in the afternoon.  They stock the pond for the derby with catfish and kids 15 and under can fish.  They can keep what they catch and there are prizes for the biggest and smallest catfish and some door prizes as well.  Last year we caught a total of 12 fish in the derby the smallest being 10 in and the biggest being 17 inches.  Luckily I blog about all of this stuff because that is how I remember :)

This year for National Hunting and Fishing Day it was just a 2 hour fishing derby and actually it ended up that we were the ones that helped out by running it as there was a shooting tournament at the exact same time and my friend Aneesah who is the head lady at Grandview has not yet figured out how to clone herself :)  With all of the activities going on around the area (ball tournaments, district fair, opening day of bow season, plus others I am sure I do not even know about) there was pretty low attendance for today's fishing derby, but those who participated had a great time!

Are you ready for this?  In 2 hours my 5 fishing children (Anthony doesn't like to fish and Chelsea is too old) ended up catching 54 catfish in 2 hours!  54!!!  Emelia, my 3 year old ended up catching the largest fish which was 19 inches.  Our smallest was 11 inches.  The winning smallest fish was 10 inches.  Every time the kids threw a line out, they caught a fish within a few minutes.  We filled the cooler that we had taken with us.

I know you want to see some pictures.

Anthony does not like to fish so he was practicing knitting and checking out all of the insects, frogs, and minnows

Even though Chelsea couldn't fish she still came out to help

This fish broke Christian's line and then he caught it again a few minutes later.  The broken line was still in his mouth.

When Emmie got tired of fishing she handed out worms to everyone who needed one

Emmie with her prize

I sure hope the kids don't think they will catch this many fish next time we go fishing!  My wonderful husband and Alex cleaned all the fish when we got home.