Page 7 - May2011-Finall

remember when I was a boy and my dad would load the boat up, get the maps out to choose some new lake of the 10,000 in Minnesota, plan the trip, and send me off to a sleepless night waiting for the morning to arrive. He would get me up from a solid passed out sleep, load me in the truck and instantly I would be fast asleep again until we stopped for bait. From that moment on, the day was a wonderland of new adventures, of dreams of the next tug on my pole being a bigger fish than dad caught, and on some days, just a fish at all – those were the greatest days of my young life!

For the last 17 years, I have been the proud one on the trip planning and waking the mindless body of a child up to head out We don’t actually do early mornings unless we are camping on the lake, but the effect is still the same. Watching the glitter in my kids eyes (yes, my girls love it too, especially when they can use their gummy worms for bait!) gives me that proud father badge to wear with a smile. They are not the super sniper fishing partners your peers may be, but what they lack in skill they more than make up for in spirit.

I could go on about the wonderful adventures we have had, and into the grizzly details (as my girls would put it) of how to get them to bait their own hooks, but instead, this article is about the things that those fishing trips teach our children and how important fishing is for our conservation future. Fishing is the first step to Elk hunting. It is the first step to planning, the greatest tool to teach patience, and is at the pace and skill level requirement to make everyone an expert. The greatest thing about fishing is that anyone can win! Bait in the water is bait in the water and fish do not care how big of pole, how de-scented you are, or how still you are, they just want GUMMY BEARS!!

My boy was the first on the scene and you can see from the patience picture on the cover, to the shine in his eyes in expectation of the hunt, to the landing of his great bass a bit later that, THIS is fun and something worth doing! I saw the changes from a house boy who only wanted his Gameboy, to a new conservationist planning his next outing, exploring his next outdoor adventure, and his next stalk and capture of big game through the years. (When I was writing this article, I was looking though old pictures and he came strolling by (17 now and still a tech teen with an outdoor edge). He actually pulled up a chair after cruising these pictures and we went for 2 hours of pictures and story time). My son is a conservationist who knows how

to treat the outdoors; puts time and effort into the trade and enjoys his time chasing whatever the month has in store for us. He may not be the great outdoorsman who lives off the land (he would probably choose his xbox for the day over a fishing trip to be honest), but he will forever treat the outdoors with respect, will follow the laws of the land, and will chase fish and land game when the time is right and the mood is set. He is a conservationist and it started with fishing.