Very entertaining for all fishing family members

I had heard good things about this game because of the variety of fish you can fish for and decided to get it for my 9 year old daughter.

Overall
- Very entertaining and realistic. One of the things I really liked about this game is that you don't catch a fish every cast. I got skunked on a few lakes and streams, so that is about as realistic as it gets. If you use a perch colored lure for alaska, you won't get a bite, so you have to have some knowledge of fishing if you want to catch fish right away. Sometimes the advice your boat partner gives doesn't work Didn't like the limitation of only Rapala lures.

Gameplay
- Like many games you can play two ways. Freestyle mode fishing is for those who want to fish lakes or rivers and not compete in tournament mode. Just pick a lake, fishing lure, rod, line and head for the lake! I did this most of the time. I like the variety of fish you can go after. I'm not a huge bass fisherman, so I avoided those games like the plague. This offers the ability to fish for Muskie, Crappies, smallmouth and largemouth bass, striped bass, arctic grayling, rainbow trout, salmon and probably others I can't remember.
- Tournament mode allows you to compete against what I assume are random contestants. Generally a field of 25-50. I assume the game randomly decides who catches what in the field because you never see any other boats. In this mode you create your profile - boy/girl, etc and you save your progress as you progress through multiple tournaments. You progress to the next tournament once you win. I got only to the second tournament so far but I have heard that eventually you get to fish areas/lakes that are not available in freestyle mode. (amazon river).

Throughout the play there is a person in the boat with you who periodically gives you advice like "Try another color", or "this spot doesn't look very promising". They tend to be repeated quite a bit so they do get somewhat annoying for long stretches of play. The person does help you if you are not getting any bites.

Reeling in a fish is also very realistic. You have to vary your retrieve so excite the fish. Once you get a bite, you need to reel in the slack and set the hook. If you don't do this you will lose most of the fish. You also have to play the fish correctly otherwise they will break the line or throw the hook. The bigger fish take longer to reel in and are more difficult to land, which is also very true to life.

Excellent graphics - fish, lake structure and scenery were all very realistic.

Disappointments
- Lakes and streams are too small. I know there are limits to how much lake you can show in this game but they were too small in my opinion. Most of the lake depths were the same so basically you could fish anywhere. In some lakes it didn't matter where you fished, you caught something.
- Only Rapala lures. I wish they had more variety of lures from other companies. Plastic worms, jerk baits, mepps spinners, spoons, etc.

Overall - very entertaining for the money.