First kids fishing day

While this was just a prelude to the "big" fishing day in two weeks, it was fun. We had 50 5th and 6th graders from Klamath Falls at a private pond near the hatchery that was stocked one week prior for the group.

We broke into three groups... beginning fly fishing, casting and fish biology/fishing etiquette.

Kyle, our resident biologist, was demonstrating the fly fishing technique and I was really interested in this because it has been twenty years since I tried fly fishing.

Jen, a Bend area biologist, was helping the kids understand fishing etiquette and fish "innards"!

This is my area of "expertise", setting up the poles for bobbers and some for bottom fishing.

Our kids first fish of the day was a whopper...well, actually they were all nearly the same size but it was still exciting. The kids had so much fun and learned a lot while I enjoyed seeing them have fun.

Here I am at my particular job of the fishing trip...re-rigging the fishing poles that found logs, trees or just a birds nest of line at the end of the pole. It was important to keep the kids fishing so I always had poles ready for them to use.

After the kids returned to their bus and classroom, the adults had a great lunch and talked about how well it all went with suggestions for next year.