10 Inch Bass - caught by James Hart Nelson (age 3)

So a couple days ago, we cave in and decide to buy James a kid's fishing pole. Of course, he chose the CARS one. We got some fake worms, big Bass hooks, and some weights. Terry (one of the workers on the farm) said we could go fishing in any of the ponds, so we decided to start with ours (a really very little pond). Tyler first taught James to cast. He got a little frustrated at first, but then all of a sudden things clicked and he was throwing like 10 to 15 ft casts. Tyler then put the hook, worm, and weight on. We have fished almost everyday since never really catching anything, but James still seemed to be enjoying just casting, reeling, and watching the fish follow it in. Yesterday was nice a overcast and Tyler had rehearsal at the Festival Tent, which is close to another (bigger) pond. We decided to drop dad off and try our luck there. The weather was soooo great, and Terry told us that it would be a great fishing day! Well we (James and I) get down to the pond and he hardly waits for me to pick a spot...he ran over to the edge, cast about a 10 ft cast and started to reel it in. I was trying to coach/discipline/parent while trying to get over there, when all of a sudden his line starts swimming away. His fishing pole really isn't that great and can't reel in a normal size fish, so I run over grab the line and help James reel it in, by basically pulling it out with my hands. It was huge (especially to James and me) and we were ecstatic. While the fish still on the hook and line, I grabbed my new iphone (Tyler's old iphone) and took a couple pictures. I only had time to take two because the fish broke the line and landed in the grass. I then had to drop the phone and take care of trying to get the huge hook out of the fish. I am sorry to say that I think I took to long trying to get it out and ruined the hook, worm, weight, and unfortunately I think the fish didn't make it. I, of course, tossed it back in the water, but think it never recovered from my horrible pulling and prodding. James however got to touch it and couldn't stop talking about how we caught a fish and killed it! He immediately wanted to cast out again and catch another one. Well, me being the lazy mother, didn't take anything to re-bait the hook. We tried repairing the little worm we had left and cast out a couple times, but it was a pretty sorry excuse for a worm.

After playing around a bit, we picked Tyler back up, told him the great news, showed him the pictures, and headed to lunch. Tyler was soooo happy! And James decided he needed to show everyone at lunch the pictures of him catching his first fish! He actually took my iphone and walked up to people and started telling them the story. Needless to say, he has caught the fisherman bug and the rest of the day (which turned out to be really hot) he asked to go fishing. Who would have thought that James could catch a fish, about 10 inches, all by himself and only with his mother there (who knows relatively nothing about fishing compared to the rest of the Nelson clan)!!