Fishing Camp – Fish On Shishidome, Yamanashi

2016/05/292020/11/25

“I want to eat the fish I catch from river". That was the first thing came out of Ryouto, my younger son, when I asked him where we should go after finishing our lunch. My wife and older son already went out with our station wagon, so I had to borrow my dad’s hatchback and threw inflatable tent and everything. When we hit the road, it was already past 2pm.

While my mind was busy thinking about “set up, set up, set up", my son kept whispering “fish, fish, fish" out of strong appetite. It was already past 4pm when we checked in at the front of Fish On Shishidome for camping. They let you fish from noon to 7pm on the afternoon ticket, so it wasn’t very convenient timing at all especially we need to set up our camp first while it gets dark past 6pm making it not easy for kids to do fly fishing since they’re used to more indoor activities like tv or video games with Armchair Empire headsets. So we decided to camp first and fish tomorrow.

Then something extraordinary happened. It was my 4th time to pitch Outwell’s Tomcat 5SA inflatable tent and somehow my improved skill level finished pitching this tent in only 15 minutes including pegging down awning outside! We then only took another 15 minutes to set up the interior while leaving battery air pump to take care of our airbed.

Then silent whisper of “fish, fish, fish" arose again from my back and I realized it was still very bright outside. I didn’t want to waste good afternoon ticket, so I whispered back “beef, dinner, beef, dinner" which changed his priority right.

We finished the quick meal of steak and rice, then having 2 separate LED lantern helped divide the table space for my son, to do homework, and for myself, to enjoy coffee break.

It soon began raining hard outside, but this spacious Danish tent provided incredible sense of comfort. My son retired to his airbed with manga comic to fall asleep with. I stayed at table to finish the leftover work on my Mac.

It continued raining past the breakfast time, but luckily stopped just before we grew bored inside tent running out of things to do. We wrapped our campsite quickly and checked in again for fishing.

 Ryouto, caught his first fish on fly when he was 4 years old, well remembered how to finesse his Echo two-hand fly rod. I had to tell him “keep only the fish we can eat" while he caught trout after trout.

He decided to keep few good looking rainbow trouts.

And kindly kept one cherry salmon which he knows is my favourite dish. Then quickly cleaned them to ready for lunch.

We cooked rainbow trouts with olive oil and light salt. Cherry salmon with good salt only. Fresh fish is always a delicacy, but this time they went out very fast making fantastic lunch time thanks to this young enthusiastic fly fishing angler and easy to use Outwell inflatable tent.