My Granddaughter and Grayling

My granddaughter is 4 (going on 14) and I get to spend a lot of time her and her younger brother. Saturday evening we tied flies with a specific purpose... Sunday morning we went to a slough off the Chena River near North Pole. She had to use pink so a black conehead on a size 14 hook followed by a non-descript nymph body and lots of dyed pink Ostrich herl for a thorax were put to use.

It was beautiful and sunny, but windy in the morning. My son cast for her with an 8'6" 4wt and her very first retrieve produced a beautiful male grayling with a magnificent dorsal fin. Her fifth grayling on her fly was over 16" which is a pretty decent grayling by almost any standard. She insisted on using her "Frozen" fishing rod and a casting bobber and even caught fish on it, 100% on her own. I was tickled to see her enjoying the fishing so much.

Unfortunately she did not understand the beauty of tying the fly and catching the fish as she has grown up with fly tying around her and has tied quite a few "whimsical" flies previously and a few actual patterns.

Sounds like the ingredients for a great day

Those are the kind of stories that warm me.

You might need to pay tax on the fun you had.

Rick

Sounds like my Granddaughter at about that age when I helped her tie some flies. Everything had to be Pink. Believe it or not, she has caught some pretty good bass on those pink creations.

I feel sorry for the fellows in her future though. Can you say competitive?!?!?!?

I look forward to telling ya'll stories similar to that (except the North Pole part) about the adventures of Katy Mae. She's a few day shy of 17 months now and just starting to communicate verbally, she does a pretty good job with hand signals already. I hate I was 72 years old before I learned how great granddaughter were.

Had I known how fun grand kids are I would have started there first!

Smiles everywhere Hap. Sounds like a lot o fun. Those moments are very,very special.

Yesireeee,
The young ones are certainly a hoot!
.....lee s.