Learning to Fish Can Last a Lifetime

  Having family or friends to teach fishing is an advantage to kids.  It certainly was for me.  And what I learned a long time ago is still with me to this day thanks to all those who helped me get started.



Like most young anglers I was introduced to fishing by family, I fished with my Dad, uncles, a great-uncle, and a cousin while growing up.  My Mom, Aunts and Grandmothers would take me and my cousin to a lake pretty often, too, and all encouraged fishing as a wholesome activity.

This was most often the case since, in my youth growing up in Wichita, KS, I had to be driven to a fishing location to actually fish.  There was no place near my home that I could walk or bike to.  There was a run-off canal across the street, but it was nearly always so shallow that tadpoles were the only thing swimming in it and on hot summer days the stagnate water or human waste floating in the canal would often smell worse than the nearby water treatment plant.  A spring storm could flood it and then sometimes trap a few carp in shallow pools until they were consumed by raccoons or opossums, but we knew what was in that water and didn’t much relish trying to get to them.

I cut my teeth fishing for bluegill with earthworms in the strip pits within sight of a big orange pumpkin-shaped Cinderella Carriage in the playground, and hearing the sound of the children’s train whistle going around O.J. Watson Park; sat a few long and chilly nights by Coleman lantern with Dad and others below the Lincoln Street Bridge strategically placing heavily weighted liver and shrimp in the holes below the old inflatable dam on the Arkansas River; and remember fondly the feisty bass, my first 3 pounder, that hit my worm and bobber with Dad at Winfield Lake.  Mom would read a book in the car while I fished at Sedgwick County Lake, and while visiting Missouri in the summer, Aunt Phyllis and Grandma V. would drop us off near the old Main Street Dock in Branson and my cousin and I would fish Taneycomo for rainbow trout all day by ourselves, with canned corn or little marshmallows.

That all changed when I had access to a car.  A mobile teenager can be a troublesome thing, as it often was in retrospect, but what I remember best are days when I would take off and explore, sometimes with friends who fished, but much of the time I fished alone because I only had a few friends who even liked to fish.  I liked spending the day driving around Cheney Reservoir to find where the old gravel farm roads ended in the lake to cast for white bass on marabou jigs, and speeding out to Lake Afton for a smorgasbord that could include nearly any Kansas species in the same hour of fishing by just using marabou jigs or beetle-spins.  Maybe that’s why I like to explore new fishing places so much.

Now that I think of it, being a young fisherman, despite the temptations of having a car to drive, likely kept me out of more trouble than not.  So consider taking a kid fishing.  They may remember the day for the rest of their lives, and keep them out of trouble to boot.