Grandson’s request to go fishing again is music to a grandfather’s ears

The water rippled and the 6-year-old sitting on the bow of the boat jumped.

“Fish! Fish! Fish!” he screamed.

His grandfather laughed.

“Yep, that was a fish,” Bruce Robinson told his grandson, Briar. “And it’s going to happen again.”

A moment later, on the opposite side of the boat, another fish hit the water’s surface and Briar started pointing in that direction.

“We’re not going to catch that one,” Robinson said. “We need to pay attention to our lines.”

For a minute or two, Briar sat calmly with his eyes fixed on his bobber. As time passed and the bobber didn’t move, Briar got restless. He opened the tackle box and started pulling things out and asking if they would help catch fish.

Not a single one had a hook. Anything with a hook was in grandpa’s tackle box and out of the reach of the 6-year-old.

But plastic worms, bobbers and all the other little things Robinson put in Briar’s first tackle box made exploring it entertaining. He had forgotten completely about his line and the bobber sitting on top of the smooth water in one of the Mississippi River chutes.

He also was full of questions.

“Grandpa, why do fish eat worms?”

“Do fish have a bed where they sleep?”

“Why do we have to be quiet if the fish are in the water?”

“Will they see us and swim away?”

The inquisition ended with the most important question on a 6-year-old mind.

“Grandpa, did you bring any snacks?” Briar asked.

An experienced angler knows to pack a cooler for a long day on the water. Bottled water, sandwiches, maybe a few adult beverages.

A grandpa knows to pack snacks because 6-year-olds get hungry and need entertainment. Bug juice. Goldfish crackers. Chocolate chip cookies.

“These are my favorite,” Briar told his grandpa while holding a Goldfish cracker between his thumb and index finger.

The 6-year-old munched on a few crackers, enjoyed a few swigs of Bug Juice and quizzically looked at his grandpa.

“Do you think the fish would like some Goldfish?” Briar asked.

Before his grandpa could respond, the youthful angler threw a handful of Goldfish into the water.

“Maybe we’ll see the fish this way,” Briar said.

Those small crackers eventually disappeared, as did Briar’s interest in them. He turned his attention to the dip net. Then to one of the oars. Then to bugs jumping near his feet.

A 6-year-old’s attention span doesn’t last long, especially when confined to a boat. What cures that is a fish on the line, something that eventually happened when Briar’s bobber disappeared and the tip of his rod started bending toward the water.

“Grandpa, something ate my bobber,” Briar exclaimed.

Robinson laughed, pulled the rod out of its holder and had Briar stand between his feet and start reeling. What seemed like a struggle for the 6-year-old was a lesson in sticktoitiveness. He had to keep reeling until he landed a whopper of a story.

The fish wasn’t much bigger than the size of grandpa’s hand, but it might as well have been a whale to hear Briar tell the tale.

“I kept reeling and reeling and reeling until I got really tired,” he said. “Fishing’s hard.”

Mesmerizing, too.

“The biggest fish I’ve ever seen,” the wide-eyed 6-year-old said.

It’s the one that will bring him back.

Robinson and his grandson were on the water less than two hours and caught only one fish, but after returning to the dock, loading the boat on the trailer and heading for home, the veteran angler heard the only words he needed to hear.

“Grandpa,” Briar said, “when can we go again?”