Now that ICAST is over and the dust has settled a bit, it’s time for us to get back to doing what we enjoy the most, getting these products on the water to see if they live up to their billing! But before we dive headlong into that, we want to take a minute to encourage all of our readers to make it a point this year to take someone fishing that has either never gone or hasn’t been in years.
I know several people that meet these requirements and have recently gotten one of them on the water, obtained a firm commitment from another as well as getting a promise to tag along from a couple more. The reason I tell you this is that, in each case, I had to appeal to the individual in different ways.
Although it may sound strange initially, I was able to take a very good friend of mine fishing for the first time, and he is my age which is over half a century and counting, by extending my invitation in a context that he was familiar with and enjoyed.
Specifically, he gets stoked by riding mountain bikes after dark. Yup, that’s his thing in life so I seized on that to make sure that we could go fishing after dark. That’s what did it for him. As it turned out, we were on the water within a couple of weeks of that initial invite.
Another friend of mine is a college professor who usually won’t take the time to engage in something as frivolous as fishing. Regaling him with stories of past trips didn’t trip his trigger at all.
But when I asked him if he wanted to go and do a little single line biological sampling, his response was a hundred and eighty degrees about. By putting it in a context that piqued his curiosity I was able to obtain a firm date to take him out and show him the ropes.
The point of all this is to hopefully get everyone thinking about how to approach potential new anglers and get them on the water for the first time. As long as they catch something, there is a good possibility that they will then be calling you wondering when you’re going to do it again.
That is the goal. Introduce more people to this wonderful past-time that we all enjoy so much. Who knows, you may find a fishin’ buddy in someone whom you never would have guessed would fill that role.
So take some time this year and get some new blood on the water. It can be a little bit frustrating at first to take someone out who knows nothing about fishing but it can also be very rewarding.
See ya’ on the water …