"A River Within" 2015

A River Within 2015: River seining with the ISA

This is an event put on by the ISANW Region for the FPWC "Get Outside!" Summer program.

The River Within seining event went off pretty good. One of my concerns was mosquitoes, which ended up not being a problem at all.

The water level was up higher than I would have liked it and there was a pretty good stain to the water which made things a little bit tough. Sometimes, when you're over the age of 50, you forget that kids really don't care about level, stain, silt build up, and other such things. You put a kid in water and they just seem to have a good time.

Thanks to Paul and Tim for helping out. We had about 20 people show up (kids and parents) with the kids being the only ones to step foot in water. I saw a few familiar faces from last years seining and also heard a couple of the returning kids tell other kids how much fun it was last year. The kids were concerned about keeping the minnows, mussels, and crawdads out of the water too long and I took this opportunity to explain how the ISA works and how we practice Catch & Release so that when they are older they can catch the same smallmouth bass that Tim does, only their's will be much bigger and stronger.

The event would have been much better with a little less stain and a little less water, but it seemed that all (kids and parents) had a good time. The kids really seem to like this event and I would like to see it get bigger and better every year we do it. I'm going to have to have a sit-down with the River Gods and see if we can't come to some type of agreement with the water levels for next year.