Zach exceeded his previous personal best fishing trip tally by over 80 fish today!!
Eric had a good bit of fishing experience and adapted quickly to the 3 new techniques we used on today’s trip.
The S.K.I.F.F. (Soldiers’ Kids Involved in Fishing Fun) Program exists to take the children of deployed or deceased soldiers on fishing trips at no charge to the soldiers’ families as a way of showing our support for our troops and providing a respite for their spouses. The following is a note to SKIFF supporters about this most recent outing…
Saturday, 03 Sept. 2011
Dear Austin Fly Fishers and Friends of SKIFF,
We had another tremendous excursion today with two super young men, Zach Christenson and Eric Foster. Although both boys’ dads are deployed, Zach’s adventure fell under the SKIFF banner and Eric came by way of another booking made by his mom, but, I suspect that we’ll see him back for a SKIFF trip before too long!
Zach’s dad, Staff Sergeant Ryan Christenson, is a tanker assigned to the 2-8 Cavalry stationed at Camp Echo near Taji, Iraq. His mom, Erica, is doing admirably at juggling the schedules of 3 youngsters for the remainder of Ryan’s deployment.
Eric’s dad, Stephen, is a Private First Class. He’s new to the Army and this is the family’s first deployment experience. Stephen is an airframe repairman assigned to the 2-227th, 1st Cavalry Division aviation. He’s based in Mazar-E-Sharif, Afghanistan.
Fishing was simple and productive today — and just right for having kids on board!!
We began our day with twin downriggers working down at 24-25 feet, bounded by Areas 885, 886, and 887, amidst suspended bait and gamefish with a Pet Spoon on one rod and a White Willow Spoon on the other. We boated 10 fish in our first hour of fishing including 8 white bass, 1 largemouth, and 1 drum.
I have to say that spending all this time with kids on these fishing trips is stretching and modernizing my vocabulary. Eric, upon seeing our first hooked white bass approach the side of the boat as Zach reeled it in, exclaimed, “Oh man, that thing is gi-normous!”, which, after thinking about it, I assumed to be a combination of gigantic and enormous. It was, after all, an 11 inch white bass!
Next, another lesson, again from Eric, came as his own largemouth bass leapt into the air about 15 feet behind the boat. He yelled, “That thing is a sea cow!!”. It was 14 inches in length.
And so it went, fish after fish, for 4 hours straight landing 84 creatures of immeasurable proportions … we boated exactly 60 more white bass using 3/4 oz. TNT jigging spoons at Areas 906/907 and then went on to boat a final 14 sunfish (2 green sunfish and 12 bluegills) at Area HB002 on slipfloats and maggots. Were it up to me, we’d never have left the strong white bass bite, but, both boys had reddened right palms and their fingers were literally getting cramps thanks to the very aggressive white bass action we experienced.
Both boys were right around 10 years old and that is a “just right” age for the kind of fishing we experienced today. The boys were old enough to follow technique-specific guidance and had the manual dexterity to maximize our fish-catching potential once we found fish. All three of us had a blast today!
Thanks again AFF and friends of SKIFF for paving the way for trips like this to take place!
Sincerely,
Bob Maindelle
TODAY’S CONDITIONS:
Start Time: 6:45a
End Time: 11:05a
Air Temp: 79F at trip’s start.
Water Surface Temp: ~85.0F
Wind: Winds were light at N3 at sunrise increasing to N9 by trip’s end.
Skies: Skies were fair.