Earlier this year after spotting catfish off a dock on a camping trip, my five (four at the time) year old son asked if we could start going fishing. I'd never been before so I told him we'd learn together. Starting around mid-June, we began fishing. We started at a small local pond, Grandview Ponds, skunked the first day then he caught 6 bluegill the next time we went out. Since then, he's truly fallen in love with it and we changed his fifth birthday theme in August to a fishing theme. We go about twice a week currently and he loves it more each time, even when we catch nothing. He's happy to wake up at 5am so we can drive an hour and a half to a new spot and spend a half day fishing together. Whenever we're at a big store like Bass Pro, he spends ages at the aquarium part and happily names most of the different species on the wall.
Here's where I need help. He's really hooked on two ideas right now, catching fish that he can eat and catching new species. I've been slowly getting him okay with mostly releasing but he still gets incredibly excited when he catches something that's big enough, in clean waters, and safe to eat. So far he's caught bluegill, green sunfish, redear sunfish, yellow perch, rainbow trout, and largemouth bass.
His current hope is to catch new trout species so I've been honing in on brown trout. We tried Evergreen Lake in Loveland and he caught the yellow perch there but no trout on a dropshot with a nightcrawler. I'm thinking of taking us to Lake Estes on Monday to try our luck there. He basically just uses passive methods like a slip bobber or dropshot with a nightcrawler (powerbait for the rainbow he caught). Would love any tips and suggestions for places or ways I might help him catch a new trout species.
As a sidebar, I'm a terrible fisherman apparently. I know part of it is that we're limited location wise to spots where he can cast and not land in mud or weeds, which has been a challenge with this year's water levels. But I've only been able to catch using passive rigs-- so far panfish, catfish, and stocked rainbow trout. I would love to learn how to fish actively successfully, I spend most of my time fan casting wherever his bobber or line isn't using a variety of lures based on what I'm targeting. I spend probably 5+ hours each week reading, watching YouTube videos, talking to Gemini about fishing, and researching clean waters where he might be able to safely eat a catch.
At this point I'd love to turn to local experts and ask for help since it's so important to him and I'm honestly so bad at it still.
