FISHING ON PRIOR LAKE

My daughter, Cassie, and her husband, James, came to Minnesota for their summer vacation in July, bringing my 2 ½ year old grandson,Coen, who was extremely excited to spend time at Grandma’s beach on Prior Lake to go swimming and hopefully fishing. We managed to hit great hot summer beach weather and Coen got his wish. If you are not familiar with Minnesota lakes, I will just mention how very clear the water is in our lakes. From the shoreline, the small minnows swimming in their schools back and forth can easily be seen. To a little kid this is about as good as it gets, but unfortunately for him as soon as you walk in the water, the minnows swiftly swim away. He, however, had great fun chasing them back and forth n the water. I picked up a Lightning McQueen children’s fishing rod, which he thought was pretty neat, for him to try and catch a fish from the boat. Well, it seems luck was not on his side that day because the boat wouldn’t start. So we opted to try fishing from the dock. Then we moved to sitting on the boat while it was tied to the dock. Coen didn’t have any luck catching a fish from the dock or on the boat. Usually we can see the Sunfish swimming around, and I mean full grown fish not minnow size fish. And that day was no different. We could see them but he didn’t have any luck, so my daughter decided to give it a try with Coen’s Lightning McQueen fishing rod. She managed to expertly catch one almost as soon as the bobber hit the water. She reeled in the Sunfish and pulled it into the boat only to have Coen back away because he was afraid of the fish. He had never seen a fish out of the water, especially not that close to him and he wasn’t so sure he liked it. Not at all! After he calmed down, we released the fish back into the water. So all in all, it was really a lucky day for Coen to participate in catching a real Sunfish, my daughter to catch a fish on her first cast, and probably the luckiest day was for the Sunfish that was released back into Prior Lake!