Fishing for Minnows . . .

Since Vance discovered last time that the minnows were such great bait, he's been itching to go back to the river and try to catch some more minnows to fish with. This time he came better prepared. He went online to see how to make a minnow trap. It was super easy, just a 2 littler bottle cut in half and then take the top of the bottle and stick it inside the bottom half, so that the opening you normally drink out is inside the bottom half of the bottle. I have to admit I was skeptical about how well it would work. The theory is that it works a lot like a lobster trap. The minnows swim in through the little hole and then it's harder for them to find their way out through that little hole. So, we went down to the river, Vance armed with two traps.He set them in two different spots. One he left alone for about 15 minutes, the other he kept messing with (McKaylie and Noah, too). When he checked on the trap that he set and left alone he was very, very excited. He'd caught 3 minnows and I thought that was cool, a little amazed that it worked, but cool. So he runs over to show me. I'm totally expecting 3 little tiny fish and was shocked to see 3 different sized fish, one was about 2 inches long and skinny, the second about 2 inches long, but fatter and the 3rd was a good 4 inches long and pretty big---not exactly what I'd consider a minnow, really. I couldn't believe it. I'm not even sure really how the big one got through the little hole either.Needless to say, Vance wouldn't use them for bait. They've now been adopted by my 3 youngest children and are living in a tub in the back yard. (the one that the frogs took a swim in the other day) He did manage to catch one more little minnow and used it for bait, hooked a fish, but it ate his little minnow and took off.Vance isn't discouraged is even more determined now. He came home and made several more traps and is dying to get back to the river to try them out. At this rate, we'll have a whole school of fish in that tub by the end of the summer.