Great Day for a Dad and his Lad

Callum’s Birthday Surprise

“What are we going to get him for his birthday?” My wife asked..

Our soon to be 11 year old son Callum suffers from ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), which basically means everything we have ever bought him for birthdays and Christmas is wrecked within weeks.

It was also about that time I was trying to organise a boat trip.

What a simple idea, I thought, I will take him with me on the boat; the only downside we could see was the timing: his birthday was at the end of April and the boat was booked for the 1st June, and to get around that we lied. His present was on order and had not turned up yet.

The morning of the 1st arrived and we woke him up early, gave him his pills (sea sickness and his ADHD one so he would enjoy the day and be able to concentrate on what he was doing) and then I told him I was dropping him off somewhere on the way to the boat.

The look on his face when we got to the harbour and I told him what we were doing and what his present was great to see.

We boarded the boat and set straight off, after talking to Dave (the skipper) Callum was issued with his tackle all set up and ready to go.

Callum and his birthday present

Our first target was the bream and for a few hours others on the boat were catching a few. We tried two different locations with neither of us catching. On our third stop, within minutes his rod gave a small bounce and he had a small dogfish, to say he was chuffed was an understatement, but when he followed it with a mackerel he could keep he was beaming.

Things started picking up with the odd smoothound showing. Then Dave took his rod and re-rigged it for the smuts. A single hardback crab was dropped over the side and after about 10 minutes he had a small bite, which he failed to notice. I lifted into the fish and on feeling the rod bend almost double called him and gave him the rod, with the instruction “hold on tight” and the skipper was there almost straight away with the net.

After a good 10 minutes with Callum struggling and asking for help (and not getting any) Dave netted a nice plump female smoothound of 11lb. His smile made the day. He has always wanted to catch a shark, and a smoothound is the closest he is going to get for a while.

He then went on to catch another smoothound around 3lb just before we headed back.

It was on the way back he found out I had paid for us to enter the sweep for the biggest fish, and his was joint first bagging him £ 12 in prize money. To make matters worse, I had one bite all day which I missed and I had to put up with him bragging all the way home.