Gaspe Penninsula continued - Caplan fishing by chance

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Ste. Anne des Monts to Gaspe

Today was very rainy and foggy in the morning. We spent the morning at the Exploramer aquarium in Ste Anne de Monts. We had planned to take their exploring boat ride out into the St. Lawrence but unfortunately the weather was too miserable. The boys did enjoy the aquarium. The had a good playground of ship play structures so despite the rain the boys enjoyed this area.

We stopped for lunch in Mont St. Pierre. While eating, the lady told us that the Caplan fish were washing up on the beach with the tide and many people were there gathering them. She thought the boys would enjoy it. By the time we finished lunch she said her boyfriend called to say all the fish on the beach had been gathered, but we decided to go check it out anyways. Boy, were we glad we did. The little fish were still in the shallow waters along the beach. A few older guys were scooping them up with nets and filling buckets of them. The one fellow let Paul try his net. Paul was excited to get a whole scoop full. Marc was in his glory. He has no fear of the live fish and waded right in (it has taken 3 days to dry his shoes!), and was scooping them up by the handful. He would come out with up to 3 fish in his hands at a time! He stored them under a plank on the beach so that they wouldn’t get away. Then when he believed he had enough under his plan, he gathered them all up and told us he was taking them home for Jasper! I finally convinced him that we really couldn’t take them home and that he should leave them for the birds. Paul really wanted to be fishing too, but he was scared to touch them. Finally at the very end he overcame his fear and would quickly grab one and toss it back into the waves. That was such a cool experience and such good luck that we happened upon it.

Mid afternoon we stopped to visit our first light house. The boys enjoyed the steep little stairs going up to the top. You had a great view from the light platform. Drove through our first covered bridge of the trip on a little side road beside the highway, shortly after the light house.

We stopped to see the lighthouse in Cap des Rosiers too but it was closed. It is the tallest lighthouse in Canada and is still operating. The sun had just re-appeared and there was a beautiful rainbow behind the lighthouse. (this is the first picture of the blog because I thought it was so cool).

We stopped in the town of Gaspe for the night. We have made it out to the peak of the Gaspe peninsula (Gaspesie) now.

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Photos

Paul with his sunflower in bloom
We brought along Paul's mini sunflower as it hadn't bloomed yet and we all wanted to see it since it is the tiniest sunflower we have ever seen.