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AUSTWELL - Not all children get the chance to catch a fish.
That’s one of the reasons volunteers and staff let students cast a line at Tuesday’s fishing clinic at the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge.
“Catching a fish isn’t that hard,” Coridell Comacho, fifth-grader from Seadrift School, said.
She felt the tug of her line just minutes after dropping the hot-dog bait into the 10,000-gallon pool filled with 1,000 pounds of catfish.
The 11-year-old doesn’t get to fish often, but loves being outdoors.
“It’s a nice experience,” she said.
About 325 students from different school districts came to the fifth year of the clinic, Tonya Stinson, with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said. The environmental education specialist said the event helps connect people to nature, even if it’s one kid at a time.
“It’s important we all work together to ensure kids have a background in conservation so what species we have today will be here for future generations.”
About a quarter of the students in attendance had never caught a fish before, U.S. Fish and Wildlife biologist Chad Stinson said.
Staff spent two days preparing two pools containing 2,000 pounds of catfish to give students a chance to fish. The fish will be recycled and sent to the Victoria parks department.
Part of the clinic taught students how to identify fish and how to follow legal limits.
The rules support conservation. They enable fish to reproduce so everyone may catch fish in the future, Scott McLeod, game warden with Texas Parks and Wildlife in Aransas County, said.
“We’re teaching through little kids, to start them out on a good foot to enjoy fishing without getting in trouble,” McLeod said.
Dallas Fowler knows all about the rules.
The 12-year-old sixth-grader from Port O’Connor caught a fake black drum in an exercise for students to evaluate whether the fish they catch is legal.
“It is 31 inches. It has to be 30,” she said.
It wasn’t legal, but she knew that from experience, as she pointed out many children in her hometown grow up fishing.
Fowler even teaches her younger and older cousins how to fish for redfish, trout, black drum and sheepshead. She just loves the activity.
“I like just wading out and staring into the water and listening to the nice clean breeze,” she said.
Chad Stinson encourages other children to get back outside. While Nintendos and Playstations attract attention, fishing is still cheap. He watches the excited faces of the students reeling in the catfish.
“There’s nothing like feeling that fish pull on that line,” Chad Stinson said.
Tara Bozick is a reporter for the Advocate. Contact her at 361-580-6504 or tbozick@vicad.com.