This adventure started the summer of 2019 in Horca, Colorado where we were camping and fishing with our daughters Elisa and Regina, son-in-law Tim, and granddaughters Isabella 9, Mia 7, Lila 3, Nora 5, and Autumn 1. We had camped in our old Shasta camp trailer on Tim’s family’s land there near the river for the weekend to just hangout and fish. It was near fall and the nights were cold and the leaves were just starting their fall color changes. It was beautiful there.
The first morning there we all explored for a couple hours and then settled down into serious fishing. (If that’s really possible with 5 little monsters). After a couple hours of drowning worms I happened to catch and land a nice 15” trout. Isabella was watching from nearby and came over to look at the fish, where upon she exclaimed, “Hey Papa, looks like we are having fish and macaroni for dinner!” I quickly responded, “No, I am having fish, you haven’t caught anything, you are having just macaroni.”
The competition was now in full swing. She went up river and a short time later she came back with a 12” trout and exclaimed, “Papa, now I’m having fish and macaroni too!”
We had the little girls for a weekend sleep-over some time later and painted and decorated small riverrocks we had collected with fish and macaroni designs and laughed about the Colorado fishing trip. We have fished the Grants Pond on sleep-over weekends since then as well, where the 4 older girls have each caught fish on occasion and the first one to catch a fish seems to start the ritual “I’m having fish with my macaroni” story. It is always part of our conversation and we laugh and tease each other about it.
Two weeks ago we had the 4 oldest girls for a weekend sleepover again and along with root beer floats, fishing at the River Walk Park is always on the agenda. Nora caught the first fish followed by Lila and then Mia. Isabella was off by herself and I could tell she was starting to get frustrated as she had had no luck to this point. She finally hooked a nice one and we decided to call it a day.
I took a nice picture with all our granddaughters posing proudly in front of the pond with a fish they each caught. We went home, cleaned the fish for the “fish and macaroni “dinner, after which the girls colored and played with Barbie dolls before having root beer floats, watching movies and then bedtime.
I had remembered that the New Mexico Game and Fish has a web page where one can submit their fishing success for publication. It is under Fishing Report, Catches of the Week. I submitted the picture and it was published the following week. I forwarded the web picture to each of our daughters and then printed copies for each granddaughter.
I am so proud of those little girls and cherish our time together. I just love the picture of the girls that I took, and got emotional looking at it and thought that I really had the greatest catch that week having them here and spending time together. Then I thought…… ..Hmmm… Isabella and I are always doing riddles. I wonder if she would catch on as to “Papa’s catch of the week”, so I called my daughter Regina to see if Isabella would look at the picture and see if she could solve my riddle.
Regina called back a little later and told me, “Isabella said Macaroni, you didn’t catch any fish!”