Take a Kid Fishing & Get Ready to Smile
Kids have a way of making us adults smile the way that nobody else can. They will say or do the quirkiest things that can be hilarious. I have found that taking kids fishing will usually provide many laughs and smiles throughout the day.
Now, to be fair, there will be times when taking kids fishing will test your sanity and push you to the brink of madness as well!!
So I wanna dive in to some tips to help you out when taking a kid out fishing and share my personal favorite story with the young man in the picture.
Ok, now that we have gone over some quick pointers to make your youth fishing trip a little easier. Let me tell you about the young man in the picture.
We were fishing a popular area on Lake Fork and had just caught a large slot fish in the 7-8Lb range. We took a quick pic and let her go. Immediately a smaller boat idled up very close to us that had 1 adult and two young men under 12 years old in the boat. The adult asked us if they could fish there. He stated they weren’t from here and had 2 kids in the boat and haven’t got a bite all day.
We told them sure, and even threw them the soft plastic bait we were using. The young man was using a 5’6”-6” spinning rod when suddenly it doubled over and the drag began to scream like a cat hung under a screen door!! I thought, well those reels are probably set really loose, when all of a sudden this huge behemoth of a fish surfaces between us!! I screamed do you have a net?!?! He said NO….so I trolled over and threw him my net. He fought the fish for at least 90 seconds to 2 minutes before he finally got it in the net.
The shouts and high fives could be heard and seen for miles. It was a sight to see. When we put her on my scales she weighed 11.19 lbs. and was 24 5/8” long.
He crawled over in my boat and we took a ton of pics and I bet he said thank you Mister a bazillion times. I could have died a happy man at that moment.
It made all of us smile like Charlie Brown if he had ever gotten to kick that football. That was over 10 years ago and it is still a memory I will never forget.
When you get a chance, ditch your usual fishing buddy for a day and take a kid fishing who doesn’t have the boat, equipment or skills you do. When you see their faces light up, there is nothing like it in this world.
Shane Smith
4 Comments
Any day on the water is better than most, but a day on the water fishing with kids is better than ALL other days.
Any day on the water is better than most, but a day on the water fishing with kids is better than ALL other days.
Any day on the water is better than most, but a day on the water fishing with kids is better than ALL other days.
Any day on the water is better than most, but a day on the water fishing with kids is better than ALL other days.