Yes, we did go fishing with a lot of young children.

We’ve been out fishing a few times with our family over the last month – basically whenever the weather allowed on a Saturday. A few times, my husband and I would just look at each other after we were done. We thought we were hitting our heads into a brick wall most of the time. But, we were finally able to go fishing at Flaming Gorge this weekend. Many people probably thought we were nuts, but yes, we did go fishing with a lot of young children – and you can too!

And go fishing we did!

It was a great experience. We happened to pick the right day, and have the right equipment, some compassionate neighbors, and a lot of luck. We are all fairly novice anglers – my husband has the most experience of us all. And his experience came from Boy Scout activities. So, walking away from Flaming Gorge with more than 20 fish in our cooler was pretty amazing.

Our secret . . . green Power Bait and many rods.

We had each of our kids running a fishing pole. I would bait the pole with the Power Bait and hand the pole to a child, and then have the child sit in a camp chair. Our toddler, in fact, caught our very first fish. I had given the pole to her and had moved on to bait and cast the next pole, when I had to jump back and grab the pole from falling off the dock. We reeled the fish in together. She was excited to see her fish. All of our children caught at least two nice sized trout, about 9 to 12 inches.

I was running up and down the dock, baiting poles, casting poles, helping children reel in fish, and helping Daddy get the hooks back out of the fish and onto a holding line.

At one point, every one of our children, except the toddler (she was into the bubbles at that moment), had a fish on their line and were reeling it in

.

It was so much fun.

After the height of our fishing, my children began to get a little impatient, so we had to add a rule to the experience. We told them whenever they thought they had a fish on their line, they had to wait for Mommy or Daddy to check the line before they reeled it in. Once the children’s fishing calmed down a bit, it was time for Daddy to have a go.

And then, Daddy started using a spoon lure on his pole. That’s when he caught a beautiful rainbow trout. It was about 20 inches long, and more than 5 lbs. Not bad for a beginner.

Flaming Gorge is a reservoir near the Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah borders. It has a marina and many docks for boats as well as docks for fishing. It cost us $5 for a day use pass, and we spent $5 on worms. I think I’ll let the worms go in the garden – they seem to do a better job growing plants than catching fish.