Northwoods Experience: Bemidji’s “Take a Kid Fishing” Event Honors One of Its Originators

For this week’s Northwoods Experience, our reporter Matthew Freeman decided to join in last weeks “Take a Kid Fishing Annual Event” a day where Minnesota residents can take their kids under the age of 15 fishing without an official license. But this year’s event in Bemidji wanted to pay homage to one of the events founders.

The lakes have melted, the grass and trees are green once again, that means spring is in the air and the fish are ready to be caught. The perfect time to start is during the “Take a Kid Fishing Weekend”, where Minnesota residents can take their kids under the age of 15 fishing and you don’t need a license for this special weekend.

“Take a kid fishing is an awesome program.” says “Take a Kid Fishing” Guide Bill Hall, “I’ve been in it since 1997 and we give them that opportunity to take kids out and hopefully they catch fish. A lot of kids don’t get to fish during the year. I think I’m a better person for that. It’s just remarkable.”

The kids will have the opportunity to catch a variety of different fish, and always it’s tough to get the kids off the water after a great day of fishing.

“A lot of them are quite ecstatic.” says Bill “They get a smile on their face. That doesn’t come off till the end of the day. I personally, when I was guiding, there were numerous years where the kids didn’t want to come in at the end of the event because they wanted to continue to fish.”

“It was pretty fun.” says Noah, a kid participant in “Take a Kid Fishing”, “When we first went out there, there was a lot of waves. We were trying to get through all the waves. We caught some northerns. We caught some bluegills and some rock bass. And then we went to the next spot and we caught a whole bunch stuff. So yeah, it was really fun.”

Not every kid though had the best of luck…”

“I got two fish, a little perch and a small walleye.” says James, another kid participant in “Take a Kid Fishing”, “It was very fun” says his brother Jace, “75 percent good” added James. “Yeah, he was getting a little jealous.” adds Hawkens, the boys father.

This year was a little bit different because one of the founding members of Take a Kid Fishing passed away last year, so organizers wanted to honor his memory during this year’s event.

“I think it was a year ago, on the day of the event, that we lost Milo Barclay, who had been one of the founding members of this organization.” says Bill, “There’s only, I think, three, maybe four of them left. Milo had a love for getting people out fishing, love for the kids, a love of everything, and Milo was just a remarkable person.”

After the day of fishing was done, the kids and parents were treated with a big fish fry featuring Walleye Fish from Red Lake.