My 5 year old son took me for a trip down memory lane this past week. After trying to cast with spinning rods a few times I realized that it was time to get him the tried and true push button combo. Unlike the plain rods we grew up with, his fancy new rod and reel was decorated with Spider Man from reel seat to rod tip. He was eager to cast the minute we got home, but I realized that I neglected to buy a practice plug for him to cast onto the lawn. With a quick glance through the old tackle box I found a Cajun thunder popping cork that I thought would do the trick. After a few pointers from me he was ready and his first cast was picture perfect. I was beginning to think that he sure was better than I was when I first started. The next few cast were more along the lines of what I was expecting. One cast went astray and hit our neighbor in the back while she was standing in her front yard talking. A few went in the neighbors bushes, one almost took my nose off of my face, and another ended up somewhere behind him over the top of my truck. The cork was going everywhere.
Some of my early memories involved me looking as my practice plug wrapped around the branches of the big oak tree in our front year. I believe I went through a whole spool of line in a couple of days with my dad having to cut the plug out of the tree quite frequently. Eventually I did get the hang of it and my friends and I devised little casting competitions among us to see who could cast the farthest and who could cast most accurately. Teaching a child to cast a rod and reel can be quite challenging, but it can also be fun and even make you laugh out loud at times.
It was not long that night before the cast became more consistent and he was actually telling me where the bright orange cork was going to land and was coming surprisingly close to his intended target. We are planning a trip to the beach next week and the beauty of the beach is that he does not have to have pinpoint accuracy to cast and catch fish and