Of Kids and Brook Trout

I can remember it like it was yesterday – summer on the creek behind the cabin, threading a half a nightcrawler on a #4 snelled hook, sneaking up on the hole, gently casting with what was almost certainly a Zebco 202 or the
like, and then the strike…a series of insistent taps that thrilled me to the very core. For a guy who was only 7 or 8 and reveling in the experience of fishing on his own, a six-inch brook trout was better than anything in the world.

It would be easy to say that I wish I had a nickel for every brook trout my family has caught, given thanks for and eaten from the waters of the Upper Green River country that we call home. But the fact is that I wouldn’t trade
these fish or the experiences that go along with them for a million dollars, or a billion dollars or anything else. The fact is that these little trout – actually, they’re char – may be the best friends we could ever hope for. In
my family, they seem to be what gets us started down the right trail. Maybe I should explain.

Ever since Richard Louv published Last Child in the Woods (a wonderful and compelling book) the conservation community has been in a tizzy about the challenge of getting kids outdoors. With good reason, too. Kids simply don’t get out much anymore. There are a host of reasons for this: the explosive growth of technology, parental paranoia, legitimate concerns about safety, and the proliferation of single-parent families, to name a few. But the
bottom line is that kids spend vastly more time in front of a screen than they do outside. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that this is not good for them. Louv points to a host of problems, even popularizing
the term “nature deficit disorder”.

Government agencies latched on to this in a heartbeat. You can’t swing a dead cat and not hit someone from a state fish and wildlife agency or a federal land management agency who’s talking up programs to get kids
outside. And that’s a good thing. But experience suggests that government programs may not always be the best solutions to real problems. Let me suggest another approach: take a kid fishing.

I doubt that our family is much different than any other Wyoming family. We’re not rich or poor, we’re probably no smarter than anyone else. We live pretty normal middle class lives, like most of our friends. But we do a number of things that may set us apart from some families. We take kids fishing. Let me illustrate. Here’s a photo from the spring of 1983. That’s our daughter Beth with a brook trout.

She’s pretty happy with that five-inch fish. Somebody somewhere might have released that fish because it’s small. Somebody in 2010 might have sneered at it as an invasive species that was taking up habitat that could have been
supporting cutthroats. Not her – she caught it, kept it, gave thanks for it and ate it, cooked over an aspen fire not 50 feet from the beaver pond where it lived out its life. And that experience stayed with her. It must have,
because here she is in June 1987 with several more brookies and another big grin.

But time marches on, and sometimes things that were important when we are children lose their importance. Beth grew up, got married and started a family of her own. But apparently the role of brook trout remains constant.
Here’s a photo from July 2002, with Beth’s husband James and their little son Connor. What are they doing? Fishing for brook trout.

Granted, Connor doesn’t look like he’s quite caught the vision yet on that one. But somewhere along the line he must have done so. If we fast forward again to 2010, we find another fishing photo - this time with a much older
Connor and yet another brook trout.

I have every reason to believe that years from now, we’ll have photos of Connor’s sons or daughters with brook trout taken from the same places. My point is this: Government programs can give kids a start in the outdoors,
especially for kids who don’t have parents who can give them that start. But for the rest of us, let me suggest the following:

- Turn off the TV and get up off the couch.
- Buy a $15 starter rod and reel, add $5 in hooks and worms.
- Drive someplace close with a stream or a beaver pond.
- Fish with your kids, catch some brook trout. Talk. Have fun.
- Clean ‘em, dust them with flour and fry them until they look like
this:

Then give thanks to God that there’s still enough wild left in this great land that you and your kids can have this experience. And while you’re at it, give thanks for brook trout.

Walt Gasson, Executive Director
Wyoming Wildlife Federation