Fishing Forever

You may recall that I wrote about fishing back when we visited our daughter in Northern Ontario and I actually caught fish. On this trip to British Columbia I was once again involved in a fishing adventure of sorts. 

My brother-in-law Pete informed me that I was “Volunteering” to help out with the Courtney & District Fish & Game Protective Association’s annual “Fishing Forever” event. This is a week long event that introduces people to fishing or allows people who might not be able to go fishing, experience it. On the day I was volunteering two senior, assisted-living centres were bussing interested residents out to go fishing. The Fish & Game centre has a wheelchair accessible fishing wharf built so anyone can get out into a pond stocked with thousands of hungry trout just waiting to be tempted by bait cast into the water by the seniors. 

This event was very well organized by the centre with a trailer full of fishing gear all set up for
use, so all I had to do was carry the baited fishing rods down to the wharf waiting for the fisher- people to arrive. We had more than enough volunteers so I tried to stay out of the way and limited my help to carrying tangled gear back to the trailer to be untangled by volunteers who actually knew what they were doing, allowing the actual knowledgable volunteers to handle the actual casting, catching and fish cleaning involved. 

Some of the participants could do things on their own, but some were guided by the volunteers who did the casting and allowed the participants to reel in the line. The range of volunteers was interesting as we were all seniors and one was using a walker and one was 84 years old, but everyone had a great time, and the volunteers seemed to really enjoy helping the participants and the excitement of catching fish was shared by all. 

At the end of the morning the participants had a lunch and then as they were loaded back onto the bus to go home they were all awarded with a medal to hang around their neck to go with the happy memories of a day out fishing.