A kid catches his first fish and lights up with excitement with the help of his dad at the West Seattle Sportsmen's Club kids fishing pond at Seacrest Park on May 21. CLICK ON PHOTO TO SEE MORE IMAGES.
By David Rosen
The West Seattle Sportsmen's Club kicked off their annual Kids' Fishing Pond on Saturday May 21 in the parking area of Seacrest Park for kids 14 years old and younger from 8:00 am - 11:00 am.
Greg Boyd, Trustee of The West Seattle Sportsmen's Club, and organizing the event said,“For the event itself on Saturday, we provide cane poles and bait for the kids to fish. We don’t use actual reels, for safety reasons, due to the small size of the pond. The last thing we want is one of the kids to cast across the pond and hook another kid. Our club members will be there to help the kids fish, bait the hooks, remove the hooks from the fish, etc. We usually allow each kid to keep two fish, but we vary that sometimes due to the crowd. If we get a lot of people all of a sudden we might drop to a one fish limit to allow more kids fishing time or if we have a smaller crowd we might allow them to keep more, especially as we get closer to the ending time. Since we vary the limit due to the crowd we usually don’t advertise how many we allow them to keep. I plan fish for 125 kids at two each, so we usually have plenty, if the fish cooperate and continue biting the entire time.
"We usually have some fish left over at the end and we usually give those to families that are still there. We’ve looked into returning any leftover trout to the hatchery or lakes, but unfortunately it hasn’t been practical. Since we don’t know how many we will have left over it’s very hard to setup the logistics for what could be a very few fish. The hatcheries aren’t staffed where they could pick up extra trout on the weekends and it would probably be cost prohibitive.
"The trout come from the same hatcheries that stock the lakes and we could probably get a permit to transport them there, but there aren’t any lakes close enough to our event that we could transport them ourselves. It’s hard to keep a small amount of water cool enough while you transport they probably wouldn’t survive the trip."
The West Seattle Sportsmen’s Club has been holding this event for many years in one form or another. The club itself has been in Seattle for over 75 years and was incorporated in 1934.
