Her giggles and shrieks of excitement cut right through me every time.

This little wonder, barely having spent three years toddling along this earth on her chunky little mosquito-assaulted legs, hollering across the lake, "Good job, Daddy!," in her lilted, sing-song voice that inflects the oddest of syllables.

But, truth be told, Daddy's really doing nothing much at all.

Instead, he's watching this magnificent creature who spends her days wrapped up in all things pink, purple, princesses and puppies, slapping away her father's hands to bait her own hook and reel fish after vibrantly-colored fish over the dock's edge.

I find myself awe-struck, wondering just when this transformation took place. When did my little girl take so easily to fishing?

Truth be told, my wife and I have worked hard at not whacking our children with predetermined gender roles. Samantha Bantha plays with Matchbox cars and watches baseball on television just as easily as she talks to her Cabbage Patch dolls and puts on her play makeup.

Admittedly, though, when I grabbed the fishing rods off the hangers Tuesday morning and headed out to fish with the kids, I figured Little Man -- more than two years his sister's elder -- would be the fixated one. I braced for countless line tangles and endless debates about moving to new spots or trying different lures.

Instead, a half-block of moldy cheese and an hour later, it was Samantha Bantha and not Little Man who I was fighting with.

But we weren't fighting over tangled lines or successful fishing tactics.

We were arguing over who was going to release the fish. Me or her.

My eyes grew as wide as hers watching her wedge her pint-sized little body between mine and the fish dangling over the dock, the orange underside of the red-breasted sunfish hanging in midair, its breathtaking red streaks across its bronze flanks flashing in the daylight.

"Can I touch it? Can I touch it?" Samantha Bantha asked -- and demanded.

Her index finger leerily reached out toward the tiny fish, like E.T. about to phone home. And when that fish would wriggle violently on the hook as she got close enough to feel its slippery barbed dorsal fin or sleek, slimy side, Samantha Bantha would leap into the air with a surprisingly enthusiastic giggle.

"Again! Again!" she'd shriek.

She held the line just above the fish's mouth, grinning widely and posing for photographs, never wavering a bit in her commitment to the fishing. We'd carefully remove the hook, and she'd beg me to let her release the fish herself.

I tried. Though Samantha Bantha "releasing" the sunfish back into the water typically meant sweeping at it with the palm of her hand until it flopped helplessly back into the water several inches below.

And on and on and on it went, Samantha Bantha and her "Daddy," while her older brother paddled out on Messalonskee Lake with his mother and grandmother.

Once again, I was amazed at myself, too. Who would have thought I could be so happy in an hour's time with, quite literally, such a childish endeavor? Instead of smallmouth bass on the Androscoggin River or fly-fishing somewhere on the upper Kennebec, here I was giddily hopping around, fulfilling my little girl's every wish with a 5-foot spinning rod and nothing but cheddar cheese to keep the fish coming.

Cheddar cheese. Really. Or sometimes just a bare hook. Fish after fish after fish. Not because I was chasing a trophy, not because I was doing something that was expected, but because I was fishing for the sheer joy of it all.

I kept telling Samantha Bantha that her big brother was going to be jealous at the dozen or so fish she caught in less than an hour's time, that he would be so proud of her when he came back ashore.

But, in fact, when Little Man returned, he was only mildly interested in the fishing -- having two or three times reeled one of the tiny sunfish in for himself before begging for another kayak trip or the opportunity to hop into the water for a quick swim.

I remembered Little Man's first fish, the one he caught almost two years ago to the day -- all by himself, out of the front of our canoe, a healthy sunfish out of a patch of lily pads on Three-Mile Pond. I thought nothing could match the way I felt that day watching him.

Then my wife looked at me Tuesday morning and spoke the words that had already run through my head.

"Maybe she's the one you'll be fishing with all the time and not him," she said with a devious little laugh.

Maybe she will be.

Or maybe it will be all of us.

Or maybe, just maybe, the day will come all too soon where ridiculously unaware sunfish and a block of cheese are no longer enough to keep my little girl's attention.

Whatever the possibility, we'd better dust off that "Barbie" tackle box Samantha Bantha insisted on having last summer -- only to fill it with jewelry and lip gloss.

This little girl might be a fisherman after all.

A Princess Fisherman.

Travis Barrett -- 621-5648

tbarrett@centralmaine.com