Fishing Derby Season

I don't proclaim to be any type of amazing fisherman but one thing I do like to do is participate in things, and get my son exposed to all kinds of people and events around us as much as we can. This is no different!

I found a local fishing event near us but it was on a workday so I asked my wife if it was something she was interested in taking the little man to, which she agreed since she had some time to kill before the appointment that had later on that day. It turned out to be quite a good thing to do, because it got us into doing things that we knew we should try, but didn't really do a whole lot until we got into the right mindset!

Fishing derby's are events, basically fishing tournaments except for the kiddos. The events are for kids usually from 2 through 14 or 16 depending on the group, and it's a really great way to get the family exposed to doing things like this, particularly for families who aren't outdoorsy. This means that most of the derby's are pretty busy with kiddos! I love it, because it's the most important thing we can do to expose the youngest generation to these things so that they can potentially find a passion for themselves, even if it's just for a few years, it's a few years well worth the time and cost!

This derby, and the others coming up that we are going to be participating in, are largely hosted by either the towns fish and game departments or they are hosted by what are called "Rod and Gun clubs" but they are basically outdoorsmen clubs, with outdoorswomen too of course! The clubs are a really great way to get the family involved in the local community, as a way to get exposure to things like hunting and fishing, but also events and dinners meant to be purely social, and a way for members to interact with and gain new friends among the club.

This event that we went to had a really good crowd! There were over 125 children who signed up, adding parents to it, it's at least 250 or close to 300 people who were participating! It was amazing to see all the families and the kids who were new to fishing, or had a love for it and were looking for times to get themselves a little bit of the competitive spirit.

This event was really well organized, and one that I think I will definitely be visiting again next year and subsequent years until the little man is too old to enter it, but even then we will stop by to help support the local community. I know that we will definitely be signing up for their newsletter, although a membership is sadly out of the question as this one is pretty far away from us so it wouldn't make a lot of sense.

Did we catch any fish?! Your damn skippy we did! Lol. The event was pretty challenging for most of the day because I was using the wrong techniques for catching the fish. Being the early part of the year, the primary fish that was stocked in the pond was trout. Apparently they put in over 1,000 trout to the pond! That's insane! The even funnier part of it, was that only 140 trout were caught, meaning they still had a thousand of the buggers swimming around the pond without being caught! Little shits hahaha.

The amazing part for the little man and I though, was that we actually caught some fish! We entered two derby's last year and didn't catch shit which was annoying. This year, we got really lucky but what was also awesome was that we caught a new species for us! A brown trout! Fucking sweet! LOL

It wouldn't be a fishing derby for trout without the famous rainbow trout though! We caught this fella clutch at the last second! With two minutes to spare until the derby was over, I threw my line out and got lucky with this one! I was really happy because all I wanted to do was catch some fish for the little man, and trout are one of the hardest species to catch because they are so picky! This was the biggest fish of the trip, it was 12 inches. We could've kept it if we wanted to, but sadly my wife is really against us cooking fish in the house hahaha so we would have had nowhere to put it! One of these days though, I'm going to cook one up with the little man!

The trip wasn't all fish though, we got this little wooden toad fella! This guy entertained my son for a good 30 minutes while I was struggling to try and catch some fish and keep him occupied. I was glad that I saw the little hopper trying to run away from me when I was adjusting my fishing spot.