Daddy Daughter Tubing Date

I've got some free time at work today so I thought I would post about my 9 year old daughter's first tubing experience last weekend.

After taking her older brother out tubing several times this summer Sarah has felt left out. I was unsure about how she would do with as young as she is, so I figured we'd take it easy and not venture too far from shore. We went to Lincoln Beach and launched into the shallow bay east of the campground. She was very nervous about getting separated, so I had us tethered together with a 15 foot rope.

She got the hang of it pretty quick and soon we had kicked out to four feet of water. We were both fishing with a night crawler under a bobber and I had some jigs on my other pole. Her bobber was the first to go under. I had to point it out to her because the fishing part of our trip was not first on her agenda. The bobber came back up and started swimming towards her. Being a 9 year old girl with bare legs dangling in the water, she panicked. I convinced her to reel it in and I would net the fish. It worked and we had a white bass in the basket.

Not long after, I was unhooking her second white bass. When I got done, I looked up and my bobber was no where to be found. I reeled in the slack, set the hook and immediately knew it wasn't another white bass. The fish headed straight under me and I made my first mistake of the day when announced that I felt it brush past my leg. I didn't think much of it and landed a nice cookie cutter cat.

I decided to unhook our tether(my second mistake) because she was doing so well controlling the tube. Well, the next time I pointed out to her that her bobber was missing, she didn't want anything to do with it. By the time I kicked my way over to her, the bobber had gone down and up a half dozen times and I reeled in a bare hook.

My daughter decided she was done fishing for the day so she followed me around for another 30 minutes while I landed two more white bass, then we headed to shore.

Although she is unsure about the fishing part, she had a fun morning tubing with her dad.