Took the kids from church fishing at Bennington yesterday, I thought 8 was the number, I thought. About twice that number with the siblings, but I had some great help from some parents, which I honestly needed. I had some PLEASANT surprises, the bull whipping of the fishing poles was minimum. At first, some of them were into long casting, but I'm just a little to seasoned for that, I was so scared of a kid getting hurt from slinging lines. So, I used some little pin on floats and a dinky split shot along with a #6 bait hook. I figured if I was going to get blind sided at least it wouldn't knock me out. It worked better than I thought, the first hour I mainly unsnagged them from various things. Learning to use the reel is so important, not dragging your line around finding every thing that will hold it up. Once we got this under control, I reminded them that half of my fishing I don't even cast, my son helped show them this technique. He started whacking every sunfish species right next to bank, gills, greenies, crappie, LMB, even ole whiskers came along. OK, these kids started swinging a rods length line next to the bank structure and things became very interesting, Jeff, I got one, me too, Jeff, I got one. I was very busy helping unhook fish and teaching them how to do it. That was probably THE fastest 2hrs in my life. Every kid caught numerous fish, every one of them. Their teacher was pretty jacked up to, she told me the last few years of this badge earning only produced a couple fish total. These kids had caught more fish than all of the others through the years combined, Thank Ya LORD. It was pretty to get them to load up and come home, BOY do I ever know that feeling. We were about 1/2 hour late returning to the church, but when they unloaded and began telling their parents their experiences. PRICELESS. I think I've found some new fishing buddies, I can't wait to take their parents now. I'm gonna try downloading the pics later, me and this camera thinga-ma-jig are 50/50 now and I don't want to loose the pics.
Ozark88 and others, the water was fine, no BG algae, just it's new everyday stained color since the lily pad removal.
