The Flyfish Journal - The Flyfish Journal 15.4
EDITOR’S NOTE
Words: Jason Rolfe 2024-06-17 09:38:34
“The ‘little’ lake, shown here in southern Ohio, is about 200 yards from the ‘big’ lake. As kids, Spencer Hunt (pictured, right) and I would follow our dads around the two lakes as they taught us how to fish. We were about of the size of Spencer’s son Connor (left). You can walk around the little lake in a pair of flip flops, but we usually fish the big lake from a jon boat. It’s still some of the finest bass and bluegill water I can imagine.” Photo: Jeff Forsee
This spring, the mother of my son’s best friend invited us to join them at a “Family Fish-In” at a local youth-only fishing pond. The event—hosted by the Department of Fish and Wildlife, local fishing clubs and Cabela’s and Zebco—is billed as an opportunity for kids to “explore fishing information, water safety, and more.”
My son, Carver, and I had attended the “Family Fish-In” a couple years ago, when he was 4. It started off well-enough. Our assigned fishing time was 10-11 a.m., and we arrived early to register and sit through a water safety presentation by a brusque elderly gentleman (i.e., Wear a Life Vest in a Boat). Each kid was given a push-button rod and a Dixie cup with a few dirty worms wriggling in the bottom of it.
At the top of the hour, the chaos began. Though no one was limited to fishing the narrow containment zone—a 50-yard stretch of netted-off shoreline meant to keep trout within casting distance—most families crammed in there, shoulder-to-shoulder. Worm-ridden hooks arced through the air. As the minutes ticked on, something funny happened—hardly anyone caught fish.
Out of more than 100 kids fishing their allotted time, perhaps three or four of them hooked up. Carver was one. This pleased us both, but I couldn’t help pitying the other kids who wouldn’t get to experience that joy.
The problem was that there had been two hour-long sessions prior to ours, and whatever trout were left in the pens by 10 a.m. were likely hunkered as far away from the barrage of nightcrawlers, sinkers and bobbers as possible—unfortunate for the disappointed kids and, in my mind, almost criminal on the part of the organizers given the diminishing returns for ours and later sessions. By the end of it, I was grousing to myself about the poor planning, the comical setup, the free-for-all nature of the thing, the myopic focus on catching a fish (that would probably be taken home and forgotten in the back of a freezer) rather than even a peripheral focus on “fishing information.”
I worry I’m being elitist, that my 43-year-old flyfisher’s view of the matter is tainting—hell, proscribing—an experience Carver undoubtedly enjoyed. But I also know, from experience, that Carver gets nearly as much enjoyment out of any day on the water with a fishing rod in his hands, and that on the days when he and I go fishing we talk about the birds and insects we see, we talk about how the fish behave and why, we actually discover and “explore fish information” with value that stretches far beyond the reach of a little worm-laden hook.
I can’t shake the feeling that containing a writhing mass of tank-raised trout in nets and letting loose on them is laying the foundation for a fishing public that sees fish—and wildlife generally—as disposable, replicable, a game. There’s a reason there’s no such thing as a “Family Hunt-In” to kick off deer season. Some will cry foul at the comparison—I’d argue it’s apt. Squint and you can just see the same values at play in the use of hatchery fisheries, a practice that hasn’t solved any of the problems it was purported to fix and, in most cases, has wreaked havoc on wild fish populations and ecosystems.
If I’ve learned one thing as a parent, it’s that children are capable of nuance. Assuming they can’t find meaning without a fish in the net is shortsighted. If we’re going to give them an hour on the water with siblings, friends, mom or dad, we can make it meaningful.
You can likely guess what my response was to Carver’s friend’s mom. I smiled awkwardly and demurred, telling her I wasn’t the biggest fan of those things. In any case, I’ll get Carver and his friend out fishing together this summer. I’m not going to promise them a fish, but they’re old enough to understand there’s a lot more to it than that anyway.
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