Fishing tournaments can be a lot of fun, but kids fishing tournaments are probably the most fun. Sure, there is competition, but the atmosphere isn’t as tense as a “real” fishing tournament for adults or pro anglers.

We had the opportunity to go to one a few years back up in Wisconsin. At the time, our @little-peppers were ages four, three, and one, since Sweet Pepper wasn’t born yet. It was put on by a local group call the Lions, and was held at a pond that was on their property.

@papa-pepper remembered being there when he was a child, and how many fish were in that pond, but he had never been able to fish in it. Instead he would just catch grasshoppers with his brothers and throw them into the pond for the Bluegills to eat.

On the day of the tournament, the @papa-pepper tribe showed up just a bit before 9 am, which is when the tournament officially started. The Lions provided free fishing bait, nightcrawlers, and the tournament itself was also free to participate in. After a quick registration, we were at the pond.

Not having fished the pond previously, we didn’t really know what to expect, other than a lot of panfish, like Bluegills. Almost immediately after casting one out for Red Pepper, she was really in a large fish. As it turns out, a nice sized Largemouth Bass had grabbed the bait, and now she was fighting to reel it in. @papa-pepper hadn’t even thought to bring a landing net, so getting the Bass on shore was going to be difficult, at the very least.

Always one to get in the mix on situations like this, @papa-pepper soon went wading into the pond after the Bass. Unfortunately, the line snapped, and the fish swam away. On the bright side, it was still pre-tournament, so the fish wouldn’t have counted anyway, but still…

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Once the tournament began it was mostly a lot of panfish. Small and medium-sized bluegills were frequently being caught by the two older @little-peppers and the same was happening for most of the other kids fishing. Every once in a while, another child would catch a Bass, but none were even close to the size of the one that we lost.

Red Pepper would want to take about every fish she caught up to the registration booth to have it weighed, so we would humor her. The people at the desk would weigh one quickly, record the weight next to her name, and then tell her to go release the fish quickly. This went on for a while.

Monster Truck the pepper was too little to fish in the tournament, but he had a lot of fun letting them go when his sisters caught some.

Eventually, Pinkie Pepper said that she wanted to catch a “big one.” I told her that I could help, but she would have to listen to what I told her and obey, or it wouldn’t work. We moved down the shore a bit to where there was a slight peninsula, and I began to work on setting up the pole. So far, we had mostly used a bobber with a hook a couple of feet beneath it, and baited the hook with a piece of nightcrawler.

Now, though, @papa-pepper had a different plan. He removed the bobber and added a sinker to the line. Also, the bait this time was a whole nightcrawler. A whole nightcrawler would be much more attractive to a larger fish, but it was necessary to get it down past the smaller fish. If the nightcralwer slowly sunk to the bottom, little bluegills would almost surely bite it into pieces and devour it before a big fish could get to it. That’s what the sinker was for.

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Soon, @papa-pepper was casting it out deep for Pinkie Pepper. He left the bail open so that there would be no resistance if a fish grabbed the nightcrawler, which would give the fish time to actually get the bait into its mouth so the hook could be set. He then placed the pole on the beach, and instructed Pinkie Pepper to wait until the line started going out before she did anything.

Well, children don’t always listen, so soon she had picked the rod and reel up and was reeling it in. When she got the bait back to shore, thankfully without having it eaten by the smaller fish, @papa-pepper casted it back out, and reinstructed his daughter on how this process was going to work.

Soon, the line started to be pulled out of the reel and deep into the water…

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Stay tuned tomorrow to read what happened next! Obviously, it’s a story worth telling, so we hope it’s worth reading in your opinion.

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