Huh? Are you kidding me? Of course we can go fishing! When my oldest daughter asked if we could enter the WAAM (Walleye Anglers Association of Manitoba) derby on the Red River again this year of course my answer was a solid YES! Last year Hannah ended up winning the junior side of the event and went home with a brand new MP3 player. For the last month the tournament was all she would talk about and was she ever excited to go do the tournament again this year. I am not sure exactly what she was excited about? Spending time with me, eating donuts, guzzling hot chocolates or running around the derby site saying Hi to familiar faces or playing with Ryan’s dog Thor. When I asked her she said all of those things were exciting, but she also said she wanted to try and repeat her win from last year. This year’s 1st place prize on the junior side was going to be $100 cold hard cash. Now it’s obviously not a lot of money but to a nine year old…wow… just think of the things she could do with it! 5 minutes after the horn blew to start the derby Hannah had a fish on. She put it in the bucket of water and ran as fast as she could to the weigh in. 1.15lbs was the weight and she skipped all the way back to our shack as proud as can be. As the derby was coming to an end, she was very excited, and a little worried that her fish would not hold up. As luck would have it her fish was the biggest caught on the junior side and she went home $100 richer. Now we aren’t going to talk about my fish or lack of fish again this year but watching my daughter proudly hold up her winning envelope with $100 in it was worth way more than the $1000.00 first place prize on the adult side. Congratulations to all the anglers who participated in this year’s derby and most of all thanks to WAAM for holding such a fun event and for including the kids.
