Fishing and Family Bonding

One most enjoyable activities anyone can practice is fishing. This can be freshwater fishing, on a stream, a river, trolling on a lake or saltwater fishing. You are in touch with nature and away from urban and city life. Fishing provides an opportunity to share this with your children.

Many anglers were lucky enough to start their fishing with their father. The experience of sharing goes both ways - dad to child and child to dad. From the fathers point of view it provides an opportunity not only to share and be with your son or daughter but also a special time to observe and get to know the way he or she acts, the way the child responds and in many ways his or her personality.

All parents should know their children - at the same time build up trust and security a good parent to child relationship should develop. At normal healthy child that grows up in a family environment that promotes values, respect and love of life will intuitively know that fathers are unbeatable, strong and are what heroes are made from.

When you take your child with you fishing and you take the time to teach, in other words when you are patient, your son or daughter will develop a love of the outdoors, a love of fishing and perhaps even more importantly, memories that will stay with them always. These memories will always provide a feeling of the "good times'. The father figure, that sadly in this day and age is not what it should be, becomes one of the most important ingredients, if you could call it that, in the life of any person.

The fishing side of things while providing a scenario for teaching and obviously the whole art of fishing, is also an excuse for conversation, sharing, teaching and bonding. Much of what is shared provides practical examples, and therefore become second nature, of how to act in different circumstances. Patience, frugality, respect for nature and life in general, persistence and so many other values that will always stay with the child.

Above all the time together, the sharing and the conversations on all sorts of subjects are solid character building experiences. The child learns by doing and by observing. Fishing with a parent provides both of these. They say imitation is the highest form of flattery and your child will want to act like you, want to be like you and he will want to fish like you and therefore these are one of the best moments for both of you.

In the final analysis, it is also great fun and possibly you will be helping to develop you future fishing partner - say twenty years down the line. The probabilities will also be very high that he in turn will also teach his child to fish and so the cycle repeats itself, to the benefit of all.