My 5-year-old is obsessed with fishing right now.
I recently took him to a pond, and he loved it. Which was great—until he decided we should go fishing again.
And again.
And again.
I love that he wants to go back. I want to be the dad who says, “Grab your fishing pole. Let’s go.”
But real fishing isn’t exactly a quick activity. By the time we gather everything, drive to the pond, fish for a while, pack up, and drive home, it can easily take three hours.
Some days, we have three hours. A lot of days, we don’t.
So I came up with a compromise.
An Easy Indoor Fishing Game for Kids
We have a giant crash pad that can fold into something resembling an enormous bean bag.
That became our boat.
I climbed aboard with the boys, handed everyone a pool noodle, and announced that we were going fishing.
The pool noodles were our fishing poles. The carpet was the water. That was pretty much the entire setup.
We cast our lines over the side of the boat and waited for something to bite.
At first, I kept things believable.
“You’ve got one!”
One of the boys started pulling back on his pool noodle.
“Keep reeling! It’s a bass!”
Then somebody caught a bigger bass.
Then somebody caught the biggest bass I had ever seen in my life.
Naturally, things went downhill from there.
Our Pond Has Some Problems
Someone caught a catfish.
Except our catfish actually sounded like a cat.
“MEEEEOOOW!”
The boys thought this was hilarious, so obviously every catfish from that point forward had to meow.
Then somebody hooked a snapping turtle.
“SNAPPING TURTLE! GET IT OUT OF THE BOAT!”
Now we’re kicking an imaginary snapping turtle back into the water before it bites somebody.
Then came the shark.
I don’t know why our freshwater living-room pond has sharks. I’m not a marine biologist. But apparently it does.
And this shark wasn’t interested in being caught. It attacked the boat.
Now we’re all scrambling around the crash pad trying to get away from an imaginary shark while desperately attempting not to fall overboard.
Every once in a while, an alligator would swim past too.
“Don’t move. There’s an alligator.”
Of course, telling two little boys not to move because there’s an imaginary alligator nearby guarantees that nobody is going to stay still.
Our peaceful fishing trip had become complete chaos.
And they loved every second of it.
It Didn’t Really Matter Where We Went Fishing
Eventually I realized something.
My son definitely wants to go back to the real pond. We’re going to go again.
But when he keeps asking me to go fishing, I don’t think he’s only asking about fishing.
He wants the adventure. He wants to cast his line. He wants Dad sitting beside him getting ridiculously excited when he catches something.
And that’s something I don’t necessarily need three free hours to give him.
Sometimes being present means loading up the car and spending the morning at the pond.
Sometimes it means climbing onto a crash pad for 20 minutes and pretending the carpet is water.
The real fishing trip will always be better.
But the living-room version has one advantage.
I’ve never had to fight a shark at the pond.
At least not yet.
Try Dad Game #4
Want to try Dad’s Fishing Trip at home? Here’s the quick-play Toolkit card.
Dad’s! Let’s Go
