I've learned a lot and grown closer to my kids by taking them fishing. It's not always easy, but the memories should last a long time and life lessons are learned.
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| Harry with a good days catch of Reds. |
With three kids, I have three different levels of fishing interest from them;
extreme,
high, and
barely medium. It's the
extreme and the
barely medium that are the most work in interesting ways and require some management. The
extreme kid will wonder off to the fishy looking hole, gut, or grass bed figuring he's doing his thing. On the other hand, the
barely medium kid will go from good attention to the water, casts and retrieves to not giving much thought toward what she's really doing. She too can wander around a bit. From the parent perspective, both need a watchful eye to keep the forward but safe momentum of our experience. Both of these kids end up with great stories and laughs that make a Dad smile after virtually every trip.
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| Starting with the Bass and learning to hold a fish. |
The greatest joy I've had in our fishing excursions is seeing the excitement and triumph of the kids catches - far more so than my own small victories of landing a good fish. The shout of "I've Got One!" or "Fish On!" gets me speed-reeling my own line in to go watch or assist them if needed. My fishing time is often reduced in order to help or assist the kids, but that's part of the deal and turns out to also be part of the bonding and positive experience for me.
Kids like to be taught, have a parent focus solely and intently on them for short periods, and I've found they listen quite well for these small intersessions. I also believe the silent times while they try their skills are also fundamentally healthy - just being on the outing and near each other reenforces the fact we aren't always scolding or correcting them. The oldest kid, the
high interest one, benefits from the quiet time of fishing with or without the whole gang along. If you have trouble spending a few hours with your teenager that's twice as smart as you and always on the run, go fish and keep just a small buffer between you, and don't correct them much. It may be the best time you've had together in a couple years.
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| Kayak fishing the shallow water with Will. |
Fishing with the kids doesn't require expensive boats, top-end gear, or long trips. Living in the middle of a large city may not fit the expected storyline of being able to fish with the kids or even the whole family, but we've discovered nearly every pond of any shape or origin holds fish - even the concrete lined retention ponds of neighborhoods, apartment complexes and city parks. Within a ten minute drive we have a good success rate of pulling large mouth bass from these unlikely fishing holes while Mom can even lounge in a beach chair under a live oak, alternating between instagraming a catch and reading a magazine. Give us two hours and we can load up the SUV, catch a couple bass on artificial lures and be home for dinner or homework. Fishing with the kids is family time, it's time spent together without distractions and nearly always results in at least one of the kids having a story to tell his/her friends. And for me, it's time with the people that matter most and I too, usually have a story I could tell or a scene I will replay in my head and smile. And they might even thank you for the fun.
Dave
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| Urban pond fishing |
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| Kayak fishing the marsh |
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| Fish On ! |
