I picked the kids up from their home in one of the Ft. Hood housing areas at 7:00am and we made our way back to Belton Lake where I’d been able to put a few hybrid and white bass in the boat for adult clients over the past two weekends.  My hope was that we’d get a short window of feeding activity with gulls and terns showing the way to fish by their diving over top of the feeding fish, but, there was no bird activity to be found this morning.  Typically, when there is no bird activity, the fishing is very slow and methodical and technical — just the opposite of what an 11, 7, and 5 year old are capable of doing for any length of time.  Then, the winds kicked in strongly from the N and that pretty much put a lid on the fishing.  I knew pretty early on that this was just not going to pan out so far as putting fish in the boat was concerned, yet, I still had 3 eager, excited kids to consider who had been looking forward to this for several weeks.

So, we took lemons and made lemonade by introducing the kids to a few different types of fishing methods while their interest in this new equipment was high.  Next we had fun by going “fast” in the boat with the wind and against it, purposely taking on “spray” as we quartered into the wind to splash the kids as the waves broke on the bow.  We then took turns bailing out the water we took on and gave the older two kids a chance to steer the boat a bit.  Then, we took to the shore for treasure hunting.  With the water down low there is all manner of natural and manmade treasures to be found. Larger freshwater mussel shells seemed to make the biggest hit.

The trick on tough days like this where kids are involved is engagement — gauging the kids’ enthusiasm level and making a change to a new activity when you notice the interest in the current activity is beginning to wane.