Fishin’ with 4 year olds – Short & Sweet! – 23 Fish, 03 March 2011, Stillhouse






I had a fairly short but very enjoyable trip today with Caroline and “Grandpa” Wes T. of Fairbanks, Alaska, and his two 4-year old grandchildren, Stephen and Aaryah, who are cousins to one another.

Caroline, Aaryah, and Stephen are all smiles about Stephen’s big catch, a 2.00 pound largemouth. Before today’s trip, little Stephen had never caught a fish before.

Wes came down to escape the -20F temps and snow common to Fairbanks this time of year and contacted me earlier this week about getting his grandchildren on the water.

I was actually a bit hesitant as I normally don’t fish with such young children until I know the sunfish are abundant in the shallows, but, I encountered a pretty good flatline crankbait bite on Monday morning despite some poor weather and knew I could get the kids on that for some white bass. I told Wes to expect short attention spans even if the fishing was good, and we got what we expected!!

We launched at 3:00pm and returned to the dock at 5:05pm with 17 fish boated. We caught a mixed bag of gamefish today including 2 crappie, 1 largemouth bass (which went exactly 2.00 pounds), and 14 white bass (2 short, 12 keepers, all less than 12.75 inches). We also had 3 other fish pull off near boatside as will happen pretty often when kids are reeling in fish hooked using crankbaits, even with proactive coaching. All 17 fish came between Areas 733 and 713 and were holding just off bottom in a feeding posture at about 13-14 feet.

The trick to keeping the kids engaged is to progressively reveal new things one at at time. First, the boat was a big deal, then the fish, then the sonar, then turning the small fish loose with a small net, then looking at the fish in the livewell, then a snack, then some more reeling in fish, then a drink, and so on, until you hit the inevitable, “I want to go home now.” and you know things need to be concluded pretty quickly to keep the trip a fond memory.

We took some good photos and bid farewell at the dock.

I continued fishing until sunset just mainly running sonar and confirming the presence of fish when sonar returns looked good. I picked up 2 whites, 1 crappie and 1 largemouth along the circuit from Area 336 to Area 703 to Area 319, and I picked up 2 white bass up shallow off Area 999 following sunset on a blue and white bladebait.

TALLY = 23 FISH, all caught and released

Today’s Conditions:

Start Time: 3:00p

End Time: 6:30p

Starting Air Temp: 68F

Water Surface Temp: 59F

Wind: SSW11 nearly the entire trip, tapering to SSW7 by sunset

Skies: Fair with 20% high, thin cloud cover.