The number of hunters and anglers in the United States has been declining over the past couple decades. Every fishing and hunting license purchased helps preserve our wildlife through funding conservation efforts and maintaining balanced ecosystems. The national hunting average has reduced to about 3.5 percent and less than 18 percent actively participate in fishing. Our younger generations have nearly lost touch with what it means to be an outdoorsman and without change our nation’s wildlife will be the ones who suffer. In hopes of reversing this trend, I urge all outdoorsmen to invite anybody who is willing to their fishing and hunting excursions.
Most importantly, we need to ensure children continue picking up fishing as a hobby and the only way we can do that is by introducing them at a young age. Accommodating your outing to suit a little kid is surely not as fun as your typical routine, yet you can certainly make each trip worth your time while keeping them involved and entertained. Short and easy trips are best, as to not bore them through long hours of little action. Rigging one of those children’s rod and reels you find at Walmart with a worm on a size 6 or 8 live bait hook under a split shot and bobber will keep the younger kids entertained catching bluegill, little largemouth, and whatever else lives under your local public docks. This does not require much teaching and in the right spot you’ll never get skunked. Bringing younger children along when targeting bigger species is an option, but their level of involvement will go down and so will their enjoyment. If they are too young to use the reel or fight the fish, give them other jobs like bait collector (they usually love playing with the bait in the livewell).
When fishing saltwater in the northeast a good target species for small children is scup, which can be fished from the boat, docks, or jetties. Use a weighted single-hook rig (2-3 oz weight under a 1/0 bait hook) with squid strips on a light action spinning rod with 20 pound mainline. If they do not know how to use a spinning reel, drop the bait down for them and tell them to keep it on the bottom and reel up when they feel a bite. At the same time, you can use bucktail jigs baited with the same squid strips to target bigger black sea bass and fluke, or rigs baited with green crabs for tautog. Give advice when needed and create games out of who can catch more fish. Hopefully, efforts like these will help inspire the next generation of anglers and in turn maintain the natural world around us.
Another way to help increase the number of active fishermen is by sharing your catches with others. So many people in our nation have spent their entire lives eating pre-processed meats from grocery stores and never have had the experience of harvesting their own meals. Anglers can help share this experience through the extra fillets that otherwise would’ve been frozen, and by doing so potentially inspiring others to take up fishing on their own. There are also those who may not be so inclined to take up fishing as a source of food but rather as a way to connect with nature and be a part of its preservation. With growing concerns over the state of our environment, fishing gives people a first hand look at the condition of their local aquatic wildlife. I know several sport fishermen who got into fishing because they loved the opportunity to witness awe inspiring sights they otherwise never would have encountered.
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