"Fishing"

A while back, SY bought a fishing pole for the kids, along with some triple-hooked lure that looked pretty dangerous to let the kids play with. When they all came home, the kids wanted to go fishing.
This put me in a difficult position.

First, I may be a dad, but that doesn't mean I know how to fish. I mean, yeah, I remember going to a pond when I was a kid and putting worms on a hook, but I wouldn't say that qualifies as knowing how to fish. Where do you buy bait in Hawaii? Where do you cast? (Not the Ala Wai Canal, I know that much.) How big does a fish have to be to keep it? (I don't even know the names.) And what kind of lures should you use?

When I think about it, fishing's a lot like driving a car -- you don't say you know how to drive just because you can put the keys in the ignition, right?

Second, beach fishing in Hawaii is WAY different than lake fishing on the mainland. I've seen people at the beach -- they use these really long poles that cast way out, and then plant the poles in the sand. They check on them from time to time, but what SY got was a piddly little fishing pole that you'd use on a lake to cast from a boat. Where are you even supposed to go to use that? I have no idea.

And besides -- let's face it -- kids don't like to fish. Kids like to play with tools like they're toys. Fishing is for people who want to sit outside and be by themselves. I think it's got something to do with wanting to relax by focusing on something *else*. All I know is that fishing's not for kids who aren't ready to chop off live fish heads and scoop out the guts with your finger before frying them up.

Heck, I don't even know if *I'm* ready for that.

But these three reasons don't amount to a hill of beans to two kids who want to play with a fishing pole and a wife who thinks you're just being lazy. Fishing is a "dad" thing, so I finally gave in and took the kids fishing at the only place I could think of -- Nimitz Beach.

Nimitz Beach, by the way, is not the place to fish. Rock outcroppings close to the shore make fantastic tidal pools, but you can't cast far into the water. Plus, there are NO fish of any real size anywhere near the shore. And for Nimitz Beach, our fishing pole was wholly inadequate. I felt silly just carrying the thing past the picnickers down to the water's edge. But it was the only place I could think of.

Part of "dad's job" is at least showing the kids how to cast properly, so I pinched the line against the handle, flipped the reel's semicircle, and drew back the pole. Yet on the first cast, the lure went out with the line, and then plonk! it fell straight down. Apparently, the line snagged somewhere on the reel and wouldn't fully extend. I tried to unravel it, but the best I can figure is that I had tied the line on the reel incorrectly. Maybe I'd put too much on the reel. I don't know.

So instead of fishing, the kids played in the tidal pools. They picked up shells, played with the little fish (I'd say they were minnows, but I'm pretty sure that's a mainland thing), and found hermit crabs. They had a blast. And when they were ready to go (after two hours), we stopped at McDonald's and got drive through ice cream.

Not necessarily my idea of "fishing," or the kids', but at the end of the day "dad time" was a success nonetheless.