Tibble Fork

I have never liked to fish.  I have always believed that a line being towed behind a boat should only be used for waterskiing.  As a result, I have only taken the boys fishing once or twice.  The last time that any of us went fishing was on our 2008 Easter trip to Tennessee.  You may remember this trip as the trip when Trevor almost drowned and Tanner chipped his front tooth; however, we did catch several small blue gill on that trip and the boys will never forget the way that the fish that we thought were dead began moving again once we started cooking them over an open flame.

One of the things that the boys were anticipating before we left for Utah was going fishing with Papa.  While I don't love to fish, I do love spending time with my boys even if it means doing things that are not at the top of my list.  We were all up very late the night before we were to go fishing, so the 5:30 a.m. wake up call was rough.  We were finally able to wake most of the boys up, but Devon would not wake up.  First I tried to wake him up, then Brooke gave it a try, but neither of us had any success waking him up, so I gathered the other boys and left Devon behind with Brooke.

We drove up to Tibble Fork Reservoir, which is up in American Fork Canyon no more than twenty minutes from Nana and Papa's home.  We got off to a bit of a slow start due the cold morning air, but as soon as the sun came over the mountains, our luck changed and the fish started to bite.  We caught a few rainbow trout, which the boys (especially Zach) were disappointed to have to throw back into the water.  It was fun to watch how excited everyone would get when one of the lines began to move and almost everyone was able to catch a fish.

The slopes leading down to the bank of the reservoir are riddled with ground squirrel tunnels.  They were pretty quiet when we first arrived, but as soon as the warmth of the sun's rays began to peak over the mountains, the ground squirrels sprung into action.  They searched for and fought over what little food they could find nearby.  One particularly enterprising squirrel managed to successfully carry a watermelon rind all the way up the slope to the mouth of his tunnel only to find that it wouldn't fit through the tunnel's opening.

We were only at the reservoir for a few hours, but we all felt like the trip was a success . . . all of us, except Devon.  Devon eventually woke up that morning and when he did, he realized that he had been left behind.  He was very upset!  Brooke tried to call me while we were up at Tibble Fork, but my phone didn't have reception that far up in the canyon, so she was unable to reach me.  He was still upset when we got back, so we assured him that we would go fishing another day.

Of course, we stayed up way too late every night during our trip, but we stayed up particularly late on Thursday night.  Apparently Aaron and Zach had quietly decided to go fishing again on Friday morning, so Zach woke up early and quietly got ready to go fishing with his dad.  Ironically, Devon, who could not wake himself up on Thursday when I was prepared to wake up early, managed to wake up early on Friday morning, when I had absolutely no plans to wake up early to go fishing.  In fact, I was quietly hoping to catch up a little on my sleep.  Devon was crying, so Brooke asked me to go see what was bothering him.  When I got in the room, Zach whispered to me that he thought Devon was having a nightmare.  Devon immediately piped up through his tears and said, "I'm not having a nightmare, I just want to go fishing!"  Well, what can you say to that?  I'm not sure how he know that Zach was going fishing, but, needless to say, we both got dressed and headed off to the canyon with Uncle Aaron, Zach and Papa.

I'm glad we went.  Devon was so happy all morning that he could hardly contain himself.  Zach caught the first fish of the morning, then he gave his pole to Devon to use.  Devon waited patiently for a bite.  We reeled the line in a few times to replace the bait that the fish were stealing, but the water was pretty still for a while.  Finally, Devon's line began to move.  I'm not sure he realized what was happening, because he didn't have much of a reaction, so I quickly pulled on his line to set the hook and Devon did the rest.  It took a little bit for Devon to reel the fish in and we realized why once he pulled the fish out of the water.  It was the biggest fish that we had caught all week.  Devon was pretty excited.  Actually, I'm not really sure what he was more excited about: catching the fish or watching his Uncle Aaron beat the head's fish on a rock until it finally died.

I have to admit that I had a great time fishing with the boys.  It was a great way to spend some quiet time talking in a beautiful setting.  You never know, but I think I see a little more fishing in our future.