the troutpocalypse,    Underground Entertainment

The Kid's Fishing Day Report (or, Troutpocalypse Now)

By Tom Chandler 7/9/2012

From the "sentences you never expected to lead a Trout Underground story" department:

[pullquote_center]"Pink and chartreuse Powerbait failed to produce; night crawlers were clearly the ticket." [/pullquote_center]

Load a small pond with a few bazillion hatchery trout, throw a couple hundred kids at it -- all of them waving fishing rods with razor-sharp hooks attached -- and what you've got isn't so much a free kid's fishing day at the hatchery as a rip in the space-time continuum.

Or at least it seemed like it; time slows dramatically when you see a kid rearing back like a javelin thrower while the hook at the business end of the line dangles ever closer to your kid's scalp.

Despite the Brush With Death, a wild time was had by Little M and her BFF Alia, both of whom caught trout, though it's just possible that playing with the tiny plastic bag of worms was a bigger hit.

Meski && Alia with rainbow trout They liked catching them a lot more than touching them... 

(At least now I understand the reason behind the success of some popular novels.)

Along for the ride was Alia's mom Jenn (co-owner of Shasta Mountain Guides), who may be a novice at the sport, but who quickly determined that worms were working far better than the Powerbait.

Jenn Carr Putting the Trout Underground to shame... On the way to discovering worms work better on rubber trout than Powerbait... 

Being a purist, it took me a little longer to abandon the Powerbait; I was sure the chartreuse was going to pull, but it never did.

The shame, Undergrounders, is mine.

(Still, the Trout Underground delivers the information you simply won't get at other fly fishing blogs: worms=yes; chartreuse gummy stuff=no.)

In addition to the 98% of the kids having fun were a couple of little league parents, who seemed to take this whole thing very seriously, and at some point I wanted to wander over and point out that catching the biggest trout at a Kid's Fishing Day probably wasn't going to guarantee a Harvard admission, but then Little M would probably begin to suspect that dad's no fun.

I'd like to keep her guessing on that front for a few more years.

See you dodging bad casts, Tom Chandler.

AuthorPicture

Tom Chandler

As the author of the decade leading fly fishing blog Trout Underground, Tom believes that fishing is not about measuring the experience but instead of about having fun. As a staunch environmentalist, he brings to the Yobi Community thought leadership on environmental and access issues facing us today.

14 comments
The loaner rods looked to be loaded with 20 pound test; there was no breaking off in our future.
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What? No Harvard Admission? Well, what's the sense, then? Looks like a lot of fun, Tom. The one in front is about the size of the one that broke me off on the middle fork of the American...
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There's a lesson there about too much too soon. I'm only going to take my kids fishing on marginal small streams so they'll never be disappointed in the future...
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marty: Their first lesson in matching the hatch…. :)looks like a blast Unfortunately, they didn't allow the use of lures or flies; I had a cylinder-shaped peacock nymph pattern (Trout Chow Emerger) in mind. Be murder...
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JP2: that what you get from a real trout stream may be met with disdain and eye-rolling after these slabs…… I'm kinda counting on it, at least for another couple years...
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Brian: Ops I mean pink sparkle…again don’t ask me how I know Aha! Were you wearing a mask?
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Their first lesson in matching the hatch.... :) looks like a blast
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Great post, hilarious! Years ago when we lived in AK, I took my eldest fishing in a small stream where the 7 year old caught a silver a cast using roe. When we moved back to the states we fished in WA for salmon, and after a half hour of catching nothing she announced that this was boring. Kids: a great part of fishing.
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Glad to see the little buckerettes had a good time.....I suspect,however ,that what you get from a real trout stream may be met with disdain and eye-rolling after these slabs......
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I think we had that (though I'm clearly partial to chartreuse). The worms just preformed a beat-down on the powerbait, especially on the bigger trout.
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And those were the "normal" sized fish. There were some real bruisers up for grabs -- and not just a few. A friend's five year-old caught one that must have gone six pounds.
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Holy rainbow trout, Batman! When you talked hatchery trout I was thinking about the 7"ers the DNR sticks in the urban ponds around here every Spring. Those trout are big enough to maul small dogs. Good job bringing them back with all their toes and fingers. Or most of them.
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Ops I mean pink sparkle...again don't ask me how I know
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It's green sparkle power bait....don't ask me how I know
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