THREE'S NOT A CROWD

Sunday was a nice day and after wrapping up some loose ends from my daughter's graduation I decided to run to Marion Reservoir for a quick fishing trip.  Ashley had more graduation parties to go to that afternoon so it would just be my twin boys and I.  They asked if their friend, Riley, could go along.  Riley is a soon-to-be 7th grader as well so I figured I'd get a taste of what it was like had we had triplets.
  
Three 12-year-olds flinging lures at the same time in a boat might seem a bit dangerous.  But when I ordered my new boat last summer I'd anticipated crowded conditions and bought a bigger one.  I often have several members of my immediate family, plus a young niece, nephew, sister, brother-in-law and mom onboard.  Six people in my boat has been the norm over the past few summers on family camping/fishing trips.  Don't get me wrong, the boys were still youthfully-dangerous but they managed not to hook each other and more importantly I went home without any holes in me.

We launched and Cody caught a crappie on his first cast.  Riley lost a crappie on his first cast.  Riley had never caught a crappie before, although he'd caught plenty of bass with his Dad.  It wasn't long and he boated his first.  Brandon missed several as every time he took his eyes off his bobber it went down.  We boated 10 crappie and I told the boys we needed to go try some walleye.  If nothing else, I figured some wipers only twice the size of the crappie we were catching would give them 10-times the battle.

I wasn't wrong.  Brandon had his jig-and-nightcrawler down for less than a minute when he was holding on for dear life.  Unfortunately, I hadn't checked his drag and it stuck for just a second and broke him off.  He wasn't happy.

Things got better.  Although we didn't boat an 'eye, we caught about 10 wipers.  It was like a fire drill when a fish would get hooked trying to avoid tangling lines.  Riley caught his first wiper, too.  The boys were having a great time fishing, singing and jammin' to some tunes on the radio.  I wish I could have secretly videotaped the three of them singing to Katy Perry's "I Kissed A Girl" and then played it back at their high school graduation.

The boys wanted to end the evening with some more bobber action as I think they enjoyed casting a jig more than fishing vertical.  We caught about 15 more crappie and it was getting dark.  But none of them wanted to leave as we were still catching fish and they were having a blast.  Riley assured me his parents wouldn't mind our tardiness even on a school night.  I had him call his mom as we loaded the boat and made sandwiches on the tailgate for the ride home.

The boys jabbered nonstop on the way home.  They talked about their friends at school they'd tell the next day about their fishing trip.  They recounted the ones that got away and Riley's crappie with only one eye.  They wondered why a sandwich tasted so good, despite being made on a dirty tailgate.

It was all good.