REJOICE AND BE GLAD

There was a tug on my fishing line, so I let some out to allow the fish to devour the entire night crawler.  After a few seconds, I reeled up the slack in the line and then set the hook…

A month ago, my oldest son and I made plans for a fall fishing trip. As we coordinated our schedules, we reminisced of a fall fishing trip several years previous where we absolutely hammered the walleyes. You could say, we had visions of walleyes dancing in our head. My son expressed that he hoped we’d catch a few hogs (aka big, fat walleyes).

I headed north from home and my son headed west from his college town - it was a two-hour drive for each of us to meet. We got the boat ready and launched it into the water and through a narrow river leading out to the lake. As we came around the final bend in the river, we began to feel the blustery cold wind. The weather forecast was wrong!  Instead of the predicted light breeze, it was more of a harsh 20 mph wind. However, we came to fish, and fish we did.

We fished with the wind, across the wind, and against the wind. We tried several different techniques and bait…nothing was biting. As we continued to fish our way down the lake, the wind was finally started to let up. Suddenly it happened, there was a tug on my fishing line. It didn’t feel big, but it was something. As I reeled in, the anticipation was growing, and when the time was right, I lifted my catch out of the water…it was a pair of pliers. To be exact, they were hook-out pliers, the ones used to remove hooks from deep in a fish’s mouth. It was better than nothing, and I even took a picture since it could’ve been the only thing we caught for the day. We continued to fish and eventually my son caught a nice walleye; not the “hog” of our dreams, but still nice. Unfortunately, that was the only walleye of the weekend. We didn’t let that stop us - we caught several perch, sunfish, many bass, and a crayfish…yes, a crayfish.

We didn’t get exactly what we came for, but we sure had a good time creating memories.

Psalm 118:24 This is the day the Lord has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it.