Let's find way to keep kids fishing
Recently I was ice fishing Smith Lake west of town. It was a Sunday and there was an abundance of families enjoying the ice. There were kids being pulled on sleds, and snowmen being built, hot dogs cooked over barbeques and shouts of joy when a fished was hooked.
Two teenage boys were wandering around catching fish out of different holes. They approached me and asked how the fishing was. I told them pretty good but I couldn’t get the perch to bite, only northern pike.
They proceeded to tell me the secret lure to use and the right bait. I told them I only had wax worms and no maggots. They replied, “Here, take the rest of ours. We have plenty and a guy left us his smelt to catch pike.” I was blown away by their generosity and attitude.
They next took me to their special spot and explained that they had been going around on the ice and when they found pike that had been left on the ice to die, they would attempt to revive them and turn them loose. It was sad to see that some fishermen waste our resources. If you don’t want to release them, find a neighbor or food bank that will eat them. Just because it’s not your fish of choice doesn’t mean that it will not bring joy to a young angler when it bends their rod. Kids don’t care what they catch, but if nothing is biting it’s hard to keep them hooked on fishing.
Our Flathead Walleyes Unlimited club donates 500 rod and reel combos every year to local kids fishing and it brings great joy to see the smiling face of a child holding a fish.
Meeting these young fishermen made me feel good about the future of the Flathead, there was another group of five teenagers fishing away and having a good time. They were well-behaved and a joy to be around. With all the bad things in the world and all the doom and gloom about crime and youth, it was refreshing to see. Good job if you are their parents! It was a little like Andy Griffith and Opie, heading to the lake for some fishing with a pole, some worms and a bobber (or like when I was a kid and parents dropped off the kids for a day on the lake!). It doesn’t take a lot of money (the two boys by me had a hand auger, two rods and two buckets) and they had the time of their life.
It disappoints me to read Jim Vashro’s article that the fishing is bad because of “Bucket Biologists.” Neither I nor my club condone any illegal transplanting of fish. It seems like anytime Fish, Wildlife and Parks has anything to answer for, that is the soap box they jump on to remove accountability. Numbers are thrown out about how many violations have occurred and yet no one has ever been arrested.
Here is a number: 100 percent of the 84 anglers fishing Smith Lake on Dec. 7, 2014, were fishing for warm water species. In a lake that has huge angler day use, there really isn’t any FWP management. You have to buy a license to fish there, but they do not plant it or do a good job of enforcing the waste of natural resources. The same goes for McWennegar Slough, the small pond just east of Kalispell that is full of vehicles and ice houses. Why are there so many anglers? Because that’s where the fish are biting.
What kind of fish? Perch, pike, bass and now crappies. With such an abundance of clean lakes, rivers and ponds in our valley, we should have a mecca of fishing opportunities for GOOD fishing. Let’s do what we can and work together to keep the kids fishing.
Weed is a resident of Kalispell.