MACLEOD PAPPIDAS | THE DAILY WORLD
Solara Horton, 8, of Aberdeen waits for a nibble on her hook from the dock on Lake Aberdeen Saturday.
MACLEOD PAPPIDAS | THE DAILY WORLD
Macy Martinez, 2, of Aberdeen is decked out for a day of angling on the dock at Lake Aberdeen for the VFW’s annual Youth Fishing Derby Saturday. The event marks the opening of lake fishing season.
Five-year-old Zander Watkins had been looking forward to the opening day of lake fishing all week.
“I went over to his house this morning and woke him up and said, ‘We’re going fishing!’ and he jumped right up,” said Emily Colgrove. “He was excited.”
Zander proudly shows off his well-stocked tackle box and the fishing pole he won at last year’s fishing derby at Failor Lake. Saturday, though, he wasn’t having much luck. After three hours on the bank of Lake Aberdeen, he hasn’t had a serious bite. It might be the bait, he ponders, staring at the small jar of brilliant green Nitro bait.
“It’s stinky,” he notes with a crinkled nose, and rummages for a better option.
Trevor Cox, 4, caught the fish biting. He had his limit of trout early in the day, his best a 15-inch beauty weighing in at 1.71 lbs.
His parents, Mark and Trisha, helped out of course, but Trevor has been honing his fishing skills since he could hold a pole.
“I think it’s good,” he shyly says of fishing.
The Cox family arrived right as the lake opened at 5:30 a.m. and said they were lucky to find a parking spot. Even late in the morning, the lake remained crowded, with dozens of anglers sharing the bank or trying their luck on small boats.
Trevor and his parents were mainly still there at 9 a.m. to help his new friend, Logan, 5. His dad, Eric Roberts, showed up at 6:30 a.m.
“Apparently we missed the golden hour,” Eric said. After nearly three hours of labor, they had only caught three trout.
Then, suddenly, Eric and Logan get a bite, and after a short fight, pull in a trout that looks like it might outweigh the rest of their catch combined. It’s at least a 14-incher, probably weighing a pound and a half to two pounds.
“I’m a good fisher,” Logan announces with a broad grin.
“He’ll cry when we put it in the pan,” notes Eric. “Whenever we catch fish, he thinks they’re going to go into the fish tank.”
Logan says he likes fishing, and doesn’t seem to mind the long wait between bites.
“It’s about getting a lot of fish and a shark and an octopus and a whale,” Logan said. He hadn’t seen anything but fish in the lake so far, though.
“They don’t live in this water,” he said with only a trace of disappointment. Next time, they would go somewhere he could catch a shark, he said.
“Yeah, the seafood store,” Eric said with a laugh.
Lake Aberdeen is slated to have 8,500 rainbow trout planted over April and May by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. Trout generally bite until mid-summer.
