I recently took up fishing again, not having fished since I was a boy. I don't believe I have ever had a fishing license before this year, so I must have been pretty young the last time I fished. That would make it an absence of thirty-odd years. Surprisingly, I still remember a few things from that time, but I am pretty green when it comes to fishing.
I am a father of a six year old daughter, and it is her that has given me the inspiration to try fishing again.When she was four, I bought her a pole and took her out to some kids only fishing ponds. We had a great time doing it, and she actually caught a few fish. It's one of those things a father (or mother) has to do. Just like my father and grandfather took me fishing when I was a kid. But as I was helping her fish, I started to get the bug myself. I thought about getting a rod and reel myself, but didn't take the plunge until this year.
It was when I took her out fishing again this year, that I decided I wanted to join in myself. My birthday was coming up, so it was easy enough to plant a few hints that I wanted a fishing rod. My wife bought me a freshwater rod and reel combo suitable for trout and panfish, and I was able to use an Amazon gift card to buy a tackle box and outfit myself with some basic tools and tackle.
The trick was how to get myself back up to speed. I remembered a few basic techniques from my youth, but I needed a little more to give me the confidence to head out to the lake. My father doesn't fish any more, nor do any of my family or friends really, so I was left to my own devices. I got a few books from the library, and bought myself a Dummies Guide to Fishing. Reading that armed me with enough knowledge to feel like I could go out and fish without embarrassing myself.
Living in the city, and not having a boat, I am pretty much limited to bank and dock fishing. While I'd like to go out into the boonies somewhere and fish some of the more popular sport-fishing lakes and streams; for now I am going to concentrate my efforts on fishing waters closer by. One of the books I read advocated sticking closer to home and fishing more often, rather than just making a few weekend trips to more distant waters throughout the season. So for now, I am going to stick to the places I can get to in the evening after work, or on a weekend morning with my daughter.
In my efforts to educate myself, one of the things I realized was there were not a lot of online resources out there for an "urban" fisherman like myself. The lakes and rivers close to the densely populated Puget Sound area are mostly ignored when it comes to fishing reports and other online information. And yet almost every lake nearby is stocked with trout annually, so there must be an awful lot of people like me out there fishing the waters close to home.
It finally occurred to me that if the online resources were lacking, then maybe I should create a resource myself. So my goal is to post the kind of information about fishing in the Seattle and Puget Sound area that I had hoped to find when I started searching, and to document a beginner taking up the hobby again after a few decades absence. If I was looking for this kind of information, then maybe there are a few others out there like me who might find this of interest.
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