I had the pleasure today of fishing a tournament where and adult is paired up with a youngster, what a great time!

I have a friend who has 3 sons age 11, 9, and 7. I arranged boats for all 3, me taking 1 and the 2 others going with fishing friends of mine. Back on Monday I took a spinning rod to their house and taught them how to cast it, they practiced with it all week and were quite good with it by today! Now, bear in mind that these brothers have been fishing before but never in a bass boat nor had they ever fished for bass like we did today.

6:30 AM we take off on Lake Erie, you should have seen my riders eyes when I hammered the throttle and put the boat on plane, he was giggling the whole way across the bay while we bounced over other boats wakes at 50 mph. I hadn't been on this fishery since late June but had a good idea of where to find some nice keepers. We pull in to a vast weedbed in 9 foot of water and on my second cast I boat a nice chunky keeper on a Sammy, "WOW, that's the biggest bass I've ever seen! said my rider"

My young friend ended up catching 2 bass, he did GREAT. He hung in there for the entire 6 hours and we had a great time. We saw alot of big boats, turtles, waterfowl, and other species of fish. It really made me remember to stop once in awhile and look around and enjoy the day, basically see the world through a kids eyes.

We ended up in second place for the tourney with a 13.86 lb limit of bass, plus I caught 2 huge Northern Pike, 1 of which I caught with 1/2 hour to go, I put it in the livewell and weighed it in since there was also a catagory for other fish species, that's kind of a cool thing with this kids tourney. We also won the biggest Pike catagory, it weighed over 8 pounds and was probably around 35 inches. I had like 3 other tourney boats in sight all yelling for me to "keep that one!" when I caught it so what the heck! All fish were released in good shape after weigh in.

On a down note, I snapped my flipping stick in half setting the hook on a bass in heavy weeds :'(  This rod was a Quantum Gary Klein flippin stick actually given to me by Gary himself 2 years ago at a Bassmaster University. I loved that rod.....Ordering another Monday

As always, TAKE A KID FISHING! I can't wait till my daughter is old enough to go!

way to go getting youngsters interested, i take my little brother fishing out every once in a while but if you arent catching fish with them than it is pretty hard to keep them interested.

Man, that's what it's all about, what a great day!!!

Congrats to you guys, nice job!!