Want Your Kids To Have Fun Fishing – Use The Right Tackle

I know it has been awhile since my last article and I may not be able to post as often as I did last year. I apologize for that but I really do have a good reason. I busted my right shoulder up pretty good before Thanksgiving. The doctor tried treating it with shots for several months and finally decided on surgery which I had March 17th.

It is now almost two months since the surgery and I am beginning to be able to do some things with my right hand but not much. I am not allowed to lift anything more than a glass of water until June. I am not asking for you to feel sorry for me. My shoulder has caused me pain for years and once I am through rehab that should be gone. I just want you to know why I have been silent for so long.

Fishing is a passion of mine and I enjoy helping others. This brings me to this point. I finally talked the doctor into letting me go fishing. He said ok as long as I stayed on shore and took it easy. I knew I couldn’t use my right hand (and I am right handed) to cast and that I would have to do it left handed. I thought that might be difficult with some of my rod combinations but I thought I would do a test of the three real types:

Bait casting
Spinning
Spin Casting

Now we all know which is harder to use and which is the easiest. I was trying to put myself in the context of a kid trying to learn how to cast each of them. So, off I went to a local pond I know that produces some goods catches.

I decided to try the bait casting combination first because I knew it would be the hardest. My first cast went about 10 feet and gave me a ton of line to untangle. My second wasn’t much better a little further and a little less line to untangle. My third try went way left of my target and again I had a ton of line to untangle.

Honestly, no surprise that the bait casting was the most difficult to use. To be honest I quit trying after the third try and an hour of untangling the fishing line. I definitely wasn’t having any fun at this point. Then I remembered that I was a teenager when my father taught me how to use one and I always had another line in the water to keep me from being frustrated until I got the hang of it. Too late now, I was done with the bait casting reel.

But I also remembered what motivated me as a young boy to learn how to use the bait casting reel. Distance, pure and simple. I wanted to be able to cast further than my father and I couldn’t do it with anything else.

I then tried the spinning reel and it was pretty easy to cast after a time or two but it seemed to have a mind of it’s own about where it wanted to go. The problem might have been because I have never casted left handed and the angle of the release was wrong. But in any case I moved on to the spinning reel. My arm was getting sore and I wanted to catch some fish before I had to go.

I had no problems casting the spin casting reel and proceeded to do my best to get something to bite. I managed one small catfish and a decent sized bass before I had to go home. I released both of them.

I guess the point I want to make is that on this day I had much more fun with the spin casting reel. I hope that when all of you take a kid fishing it is because you want them to have fun. It is great if they can learn the finer points of fishing but let them learn when they want to learn and let them enjoy it so they will continue the tradition and pass it on to someone else.