fishing with kids

Hi Folks, Guided two trips yesterday with young aspiring anglers.  Beautiful Vermont summer day with air temperatures in the high seventies and light cloud cover.  Water temperatures are still warm.  My morning excursion was bank fishing where the surface temperature was 76 degrees.  It is always rewarding for me to see young repeat anglers whose skill level improves.  We did away with the floats yesterday morning and taught the kids how to fish off the bottom.  Pretty bright out to have the fish rise so we went down to them.  Garden hackle was our bait of choice.  We hooked and landed numerous pumpkin seed, bullhead, perch, and smallmouth bass. Also, we were able to use a floating perch rapala and catch smallmouth as well.  Kids just want to have fun and they do not care what they catch as long as they catch something.  Fun process watching them became better casters and having them successfully hook a fish that bites.  In the afternoon, I took group of young people river fishing on the lower Winooski for smallmouth bass and fall fish.  The Winooski was low and clear and the water temperature was 74 degrees.  The irony of this trip was I did not want to fish for trout due to the warm water temperatures and the first couple of fish landed were 15" plus wild rainbows.  We landed them quickly and they never left the water while being released.  The rainbows were in excellent condition and did not look stressed from the hot weather of July.  So, after that we got down to business and caught numerous large fall fish and 1 2lb river smallmouth that put up a good fight.  The lure of the day was silver bladed beetle spin.  Looks like a good week for fishing with some rain hopefully and cool night time air temps.  We will see.  Remember to clean your gear and keep the non-native species at home.  Have Fun, Willy