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Making some time to practice field skills for the outdoors is part of the responsibility of spending time outdoors. Columnist Scott Mackenthun’s daughter Quinn shows how to cast her first fishing rod.

Cora Mackenthun shows off a pumpkinseed sunfish caught using a short and simple, floating push button fishing rod. These simple rods, many first modeled with Snoopy from the Charles Schultz Peanuts cartoon, are perfect for beginning anglers.

Making some time to practice field skills for the outdoors is part of the responsibility of spending time outdoors. Columnist Scott Mackenthun’s daughter Quinn shows how to cast her first fishing rod.

Cora Mackenthun shows off a pumpkinseed sunfish caught using a short and simple, floating push button fishing rod. These simple rods, many first modeled with Snoopy from the Charles Schultz Peanuts cartoon, are perfect for beginning anglers.

Milestones keep coming at our house.

Most recently was a utility-driven decision to retire the “Dora the Explorer” floating rod with push-button reel and what feels like 12-pound monofilament. Like boxing up a baby crib, diaper bags or car seats, putting away the Dora rod for good was bittersweet in knowing that youth was served and that we can’t go back.

Our little girls are growing up.

The Dora rod was passed down from one girl to the other, with some incredible catches on both. A 19-inch smallmouth bass pulled a great deal of drag out on a dockside catch for my oldest, and my youngest caught some hefty bluegill with the rest of our family on lakes tucked deep in the heart of the Chippewa National Forest.

While I’ve been consulted about starting rods and reels for beginning youth, the truth is that spinning rods take some basic skills and practice and are not great choices for beginners.

Neither are baitcasters, for obvious reasons to those who use them; they backlash easily and require some basic casting understanding and experience before they can be used proficiently.

Some parents and mentors choose to jump right to spinning gear, but it can be a struggle for really young kids already working on their own bodily motor skills and hand-eye coordination. The most important feature of beginner rods is a tie between ease of use and the ability to float.

Ask me how I know about the latter!

On our annual family vacation this summer, I packed my oldest daughter’s spinning rod and reel combo and my youngest daughter’s Dora rod, as well as a pack of casting plugs. In the buzz of activity that the weekly rat race brings at our house, I had neglected, as simple as it sounds, to dedicate time to practice spin casting with my youngest daughter through this spring and summer.

Her casting skills needed some improvement, with many casts landing wayward or in a heap a few feet away from her.

With a whole week of vacation days to use for whatever we wanted, my youngest and I worked on her spin casting. A little patience goes a long way and being descriptive helps.

Instructing her how far to reel up the line and casting plug, telling her to fully extend her arms and swing forward strongly to use the leverage of her rod and her arms, reminding her to check her backcast so she doesn’t hook anyone or anything, teaching her the angle to start her forward cast, where to release the line, and where to end the rod’s momentum in her forward cast, as well as instructing her to point at her target as part of her follow-through, all were worked through in 15-20 minutes.

Best of all was that my wife came walking out to check on us just as it all was clicking.

My youngest was proud to show her mother that she put it all together and could land her casts in the target area that I had laid out. Poor casts were made, mistakes occurred, but determination and practice from repetition eventually led to breakthroughs and good habits conjunctively working.

When it came time to fish, both girls could cast very well, and now the trick is to get them on the water to give them more fun and meaningful repetitions.

Parents, I believe, often fall into the fallacy of not making time for outdoor skills development. Work and activities judged more useful or meaningful than idle leisure are given high priority, and before you know it, entire years have passed without practicing an important field skill or spending time outdoors together.

Sadly for some, a whole lifetime goes by.

The result of so little or no practice is an unprepared youth who has a bad experience and may become deterred from the outdoors.

I like to ask my kids this simple question. “You know how you get to Carnegie Hall, don’t you? Practice.”

It’s a simple reminder that if we are going to do things together outdoors, we owe it to ourselves and our quarry to make time not just to hunt and fish, but to practice for those activities on the front end to do it well, and in the case of hunting, ethically.

I can be just as guilty as any for not making time. This summer I pledged to take the girls out to shoot BB guns, practice with our bows, fish the Minnesota River and get my oldest better fitted to her shotgun and build on the trap shooting practice we did last summer.

Late summer has arrived, and we haven’t made the time.

So you can bet that I will double down in August and make time to get to a little of each of those activities.

It’s never too late to get a kid outdoors. Don’t wait for the time to come; make the time a priority and plan it into your schedule.

Scott Mackenthun has been writing about hunting and fishing since 2005. Email him at scott.mackenthun@gmail.com.

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