Volunteers arrived at the North Point Marina at 8 a.m. and received a briefing on how the morning was to unfold. Kids, each accompanied by at least one parent or guardian, began to arrive around 9 a.m.. As they arrived, each was paired with a boat captain to head out on Belton Lake in pursuit of fish.

While most of the boat captains were from the local area, one boat crew, captained by fellow freshwater fishing guide Jason Weisberg, travelled in from Richland-Chambers Reservoir, near Corsicana.

When asked what motivated him to make the drive, Weisberg replied, “Cecilia (Weisberg’s wife) and I are the CAST for Kids coordinators for the Richland-Chambers event, and when Mrs. (Randi) Bingham asked for boats because she thought she was going to be short, I knew that feeling well and was able make the Belton event along with a fellow guide who wanted to deckhand for the event.”

Some captains opted to fish for bass, others for catfish or sunfish or hybrid striped bass. I opted to take my assigned young man, Riggin Crain, and his stepfather, Peter Delavan, out in search of white bass.

Riggin is 13 years old and attends Smith Middle School.

Delavan communicated to the CAST Program Events Director, Jim Behnken, that Riggin was a bit anxious about things because this event was well outside of the daily routine in which he functions best.

Understanding this, my brother and I tried to put Riggin at ease by explaining what we would be doing before we did it so there would be no surprises.

The four of us departed North Point Marina by boat and, after a few minutes on plane, settled down at idle speed over a patch of bottom in about 34 feet of water.

Side-imaging revealed the presence of an abundance of white bass and the threadfin shad upon which the white bass feed. I marked a particularly large school of white bass in this vicinity by touching the screen of my sonar unit, and then gave the trolling motor a command to go to that location and essentially park us over top of the fish.

I handed Riggin a light spinning outfit and stood beside him and showed him each step of the process for executing a successful retrieve. Riggin let his MAL Original Lure fall to the bottom, closed his spinning reel’s bail by hand, took up any slack in the line, and then began a series of seven handle turns with the first being faster than the remaining six so as to initiate the spinning of the blade.

Riggin landed a fish on his first attempt, and 52 additional fish would follow, all caught from the same area.

As we approached the 11:45 a.m. deadline to return to our meeting point, I saw that Riggin was getting pretty hot in the increasingly warm and windless conditions. I asked him if he would like to head back in for lunch and the awards ceremony or try for a short time to see if we could catch more than one fish at a time.

Riggin opted to fish.

I then incorporated downriggers into our approach, letting a single three-armed umbrella rig equipped with #13 Pet Spoons down to just four feet off the bottom as we trolled upstream of the area where we had just been fishing. In a matter of minutes, the bouncing rod tip telegraphed the strikes of a pair of white bass.

Riggin reeled these two fish in successfully, we added those to his total for a final count of 55 fish, and we headed back to North Point Marina, allowing the breeze generated by the boat ride to cool us down.

Once at the marina, Riggin was greeted by his mother, Danielle Delavan, and one of his siblings.

As the closing ceremony got underway, the local event coordinator, Randi Bingham of Bingham Marine on FM 439 in Belton, called each child up, took their picture, presented him or her with a plaque, a tackle box, a rod and reel, and a gift card to Walmart. All attendees were treated to a barbecue lunch, courtesy of Farm Bureau Insurance.

As scheduled, the event concluded right at 12:30 p.m. Later in the week, CAST sent out surveys asking how to make an already well-run event even better for the future.

Bingham summed up the event well, saying, “Sunday was absolutely perfect! I couldn’t have asked for a better day for these children! Every single child and their families were able to get on a boat and spend a few hours on the water fishing. This was our best year yet and we can’t wait for next year!”