Fishing 101 at Lake Cooper

My sister called me and said she was taking two of her granddaughters camping at lake Cooper state park in east Tx. She said they told her they wanted to go fishing. That's where I come into the picture,she said she didn't know anything about fishing and would I like to go along and give a hand teaching them some basics.Without hesitation I said YES. After all how could I turn down a chance to go fishing and be the most experienced one there.(doesn't happen often)

The first thing we had to do was get them some equiptment suited for them. So we went shopping and found a couple of rod & reel combos that would be good for them to start with and would last for more than just a couple of trips.

On Friday August 21st. Lesa and the girls (Alexis and Rebecca ) headed out for lake Cooper to get the spot picked out and set up for the weekend. They went swimming and did some exploring. They saw an armadillo and a rabbit.The girls said around sundown the could see a bunch of catfish at one point along the bank.

Anyway it was about 9:30 pm before I was able to get there after I got off work. As i was pulling into the park I saw a hog just off the road. It was solid white which was a little unusual I tought,so I stopped and backed up to get a picture of it. Of course it was gone when I got backed up so no pics.

When I got to the camping spot we built a fire and roasted some hot dogs and marshmallows and just had some fun talking and trying to keep rebecca from playing in the fire. She reminded me of myself at that age. We talked about fishing and what we would do the next day. About 11:30 as we were sitting at the table talking I looked up and there were two raccoons coming out of the woods looking for a hand out, and yes they got one.

We got up Sat. morn. and had a very good breakfast that Lesa prepared for all of us. Then we went to the local bait shop to get some woarms for the girls. After that we went back to the park and I showed the girls how to put their equiptment together and how to take care of it.

Now we're ready to go fishing so we drove around and found a dock they could fish off of, so we went down to the dock and started getting ready Rebecca had no trouble pinching off pieces of the worm to bait her hook,on the other hand Alexis was alittle mor stand offish about about this part of fishing. She didn't mind putting it on the hook so much but she was not about to pinch it apart.

I showed them how to cast the setup and they both did very well. So i told them they would probably have the most luck catching fish if they would fish by the structure on the dock. But they were pretty sure if they cast it out away from them they would have better luck. After trying that for a while I was able to talk Alexis into trying the structure where almost immediatly she caught the first fish. After that it was on, I don't rember which one caught the most but they both caught quite a few. So i explained how fish really like to hang around structure and when you'r fishing be sure to looke for structure. I don't know how many perch were caught but it was plenty. We went back to camp and fixed something to eat and just relaxed for a while. Then we took them back out for some more fishing that after evening and thats right they caught some more.

Needless to say it was alot of fun helping them get started fishing and watching the excitement in their faces everytime they caught a fish.

You can really tell that they are hooked on fishing when the fish stop biteing and they don't want to leave because they just know that any second they are going to get another one.

Now back to taking care of and protecting your gear from getting broken. I told them never store them behind a door for fear of them getting in between the door and the facing and getting broke when you close the door,and beware of ceiling fans when indoors. Well I was pretty sure one of them would get broke after all I can't rember how many fishing poles I broke growing up. I just didn't know it would be so soon. As we were getting everything ready to pack the car Lesa told the girls to take their fishing poles out to the car so they would be ready to load up. Well here comes Alexis walking back to where we were, she walked up to Lesas and said I'm never going to get to go fishing again. somehow she let her pole get in the door of the car and you guessed it closed the door and broke off about six inches of the rod tip.

All ended up well we were able to get a rod that my brother had in his garage to replace the pretty broken one with.

All in all we had a great time and watch out world here comes two more fisherman into the sport.

Richard Gowens