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New Hampshire Trappers Association Service Projects Saint Charles Children’s Home Fishing Days To
learn more about the Saint Charles Children's Home please visit their
website. Pictures From Our Most Recent Ice Fishing day on
February 13, 2005
New Hampshire Trappers Take
the Kids Fishing By Mel Liston Strafford, New Hampshire July 2002 In June 2001 the New Hampshire Trappers Association started a new public service project to assist the Saint Charles Children’s Home in Rochester with a fishing program for the children. It has been my honor to represent the NH Trappers Association as our coordinator for this worthwhile endeavor. It has been enjoyable to work with the Sisters and staff of Saint Charles to coordinate the various outings and cover all the bases. It has been gratifying to see the membership and friends of the NHTA who have volunteered their time for such a worthy project. We are all grateful to and thankful for the clubs, organizations, and private landowners who have made their property and facilities available to us for this purpose. I am especially thankful that so many of us have had the opportunity to experience these wonderful children. Each one of these children is a little love magnet, they will draw the love out of you and absorb it like a sponge, they will get more love out of you than you ever realized was there to give. Each one of these special and innocent children will ensnare you in an energy of love transfer, absorbing yours and radiating theirs unto you. You will come away from the encounter both spent and rejuvenated. If it’s your first time you will think it’s magic and from then on you will know its magic.
So lets go back to the beginning and get the whole story. My life partner Cathi is a special education teacher for the Rochester school system. Back in 1999 Cathi became quite attached to one of her students who was also a resident at the St. Charles Children’s Home. Cathi and I went through the State of NH Health and Human Services Family Services Department to get ourselves and our home approved for foster care. Once approved, we became Big Brother and Big Sister to the boy previously mentioned and his older brother who was also at St. Charles. We spent a lot of time with these two boys who were ultimately reunited with their parents and a third brother who was the oldest. We continue to stay involved with all three boys.
During the summer of “2000” I went on my first fishing expedition with the Saint Charles Children’s Home. On that first trip we took just the boys, about fifteen of them along with, two sisters and myself. Our destination was the pond owned and operated by the Farmington Fish and Game Club. The sisters arrived about 10am with the boys aged three through nine, lunch for everyone, a tangled mess of broken rods and malfunctioning reels. I brought the worms, minnows, hooks, bobbers, and split shot. It was four hours of absolutely enjoyable chaos. “Please Mel me next!” “My pole is broken.” “Would you take off this fish?” “Can I have a bigger bobber?” “How come turtles have shells?” “My line is all tangled.” “My hook is stuck up in the tree.” “My minnow died.” “Is this a trout?” “I have to go number 2.” “So and so took my spot.” “Maybe I turned the reel the wrong way?” “I caught a frog.” “You promised you would bait my hook next.” The time went by quickly and everything progressed as you might expect. Two boys fell in the water, one jumped in, one got a hook in the finger, there was a lot of laughing, one fight, and one boy messed his pants. At the end they all thanked me, piled back in the two vans, and drove off in a cloud of dust. I looked down at a pile of damaged rods and reels left for me to sort out and repair, a bucket full of dead or dying yellow perch for mink bait. I gazed at the still pond and the shoreline now vacant and quite. I was well satisfied. Time well spent. There were one or two more outings that season, always just the boys or just the girls. That fall I took all their poles and reels home for repair. They were mostly a hodge podge of donated used equipment held together with duct tape and super glue, but they all had some kids name on the reel or the pole. I fixed what was fixable and junked the rest. It was Christmas so I bought them a complete set of new equipment. Everyone got a new pole and reel with the old repaired stuff kept for back up.
The following spring of
2001 I was looking forward to more fishing with the St. Charles children
but was informed that the sister who was most involved and the only one
who knew how or where to fish was taking a new assignment elsewhere.
Additionally new regulations and guidelines had been established
for children in this category which now required one adult present for
each three children when activities where around water.
This included trips to the beach, fishing, or swimming in the
pool at the Children’s home. This
was bad news, so I pondered it for a while and decided to propose to the
NH Trappers Association that we establish a fishing program for the St.
Charles children. At the
June 5, 2001 directors meeting the St. Charles Children’s Fishing
Program was approved. By
June 13 all the elements of how the program would function were
established. I contacted
Bob Todd the president of the Farmington Fish and Game Club to check
their schedule of events and get permission for our first NHTA/St.
Charles Fishing day to be on June 30.
The kids were all looking forward to their upcoming fishing trip,
they would tell Cathi at school that they were going and couldn’t
wait, they would call me at home and let me know they wanted to catch
the biggest fish. I got to
the pond at about 9:30 am and met NHTA members Bob McMaster and Mike
Paquette both of Rochester who were finishing their breakfast at
Sporto’s Diner. Mike had
his 12-year-old daughter, Lacey along.
Mike has a taxidermy business and sets up a tent or booth at a
lot of trapping rendezvous, Indian POW WOWS, and sportsman shows.
Lacey is always there to help with the family business, available
to help on Dad’s trapline, and was a lot of help with the children
when fishing. Another NHTA
member, Randy Brown of Strafford showed up with his 7-year-old son Seth,
to round out our pool of volunteers.
A little after 10am three sisters from St. Charles arrived in two
vans with all the boys and girls who were able to come that day.
The kids fished until noon then we all had a picnic lunch
provided by the sisters. After lunch it was back to the fishing until about 1:45pm
when we started to pick up. The
catch was a mixed bag of bluegills, yellow perch, chubs, hornpout,
pickerel, frogs, pollywogs, a turtle, one snake and two trout.
Most everything got turned loose alive.
Of course one boy wanted to keep his turtle and a girl had
already named her frog. Someone
else had a jar with two pollywogs.
Our next fishing excursion was scheduled for August 4th and was held at a small private spring fed pond on the property of Robert Bordeaux in Milton. There were two types of fish to be had. Catfish about as big as your thumb and lots of trout from 12-16 inches long. Thanks Bob for all those beautiful trout the kids loved hauling them in. The stunted hornpout kept the kids and volunteers busy. Plus those little pout are fine trapping bait for mink and coon. I was the first volunteer on site this time. Mike Pauquette showed up next followed soon thereafter by Bob McMaster and his wife Alice. My gal Cathi Cherry came next, then came Mike Currier another NHTA member along with his girl friend Diane and his son Justin. The sisters arrived shortly with all the girls from St. Charles. Once again we all had a blast, great fishing, beautiful day, fine picnic, and when it was all over, Mike Currier bought ice creams for everyone.
Before you know it, summer was over and the kids were all back in school. The fall drew the trappers back into the forest but they didn’t forget the kids at St. Charles. The NH Trappers Association voted to purchase 24 quality ice fishing traps along with other associated gear so that our volunteers could take the kids ice fishing. Bob McMaster shopped around for the traps and Newt’s Bait Shop of Union gave us a good deal on them, because it was for the kids. Bob and I hunted up the rest of the gear and Bob’s good friend Steve Beaudoin of Rochester rigged all the traps. St. Charles was presented with the fishing equipment as a Christmas gift.
We had three tentative ice
fishing dates but because of open water or unsafe ice only one date
worked out. It was another
beautiful sunny day. We
were hosted by Pat and Carolyn Bedford owners of the Ayers Lake
Campground in Barrington. The flags were going up all day, the kids pulled in a lot of
perch and pickerel. The
volunteers all brought ice traps, along with the 24 traps given to St.
Charles by the NHTA we had out perhaps 50 traps.
The kids drew numbers from a hat to determine the order they
would take when the flags went up.
Each kid got several chances to pull in a fish.
Amongst the volunteers there were three or four powered augers so
the traps went in pretty fast.
With the end of winter and
spring turning to summer we squeezed in one more fishing trip with the
kids to round out the first year in this newest of NHTA public service
project. May 19 was sunny
with a brisk wind. Cathi
and I went to Hanson Pond in Gonic, the site of the Sqaumanagonic
Sportsmen’s Association facilties on land leased long term from the
city of Rochester. Sqaumanagonic
administers the properties both for club and public activities.
On this weekend they had three separate fishing events scheduled
for kids. Sqaumanagonic purchased 300 large trout, which were matched
by NH Fish and Game hatchery supply.
Presently the most active clubs at Sqaumanagonic are the Profile
Bowmen and the Granite State Houndsmen.
Larry Gaedtke the President of both Sqaumanagonic and the Profile
Bowmen met us at the gate and introduced us to other Profile volunteers
Rob Clarke, Gary Jewel, Mike Biddell, and Larry’s son Brian Gaedtke.
Two sisters and all the St. Charles kids arrived right on time.
The action was fast and furious with perhaps one hundred trout
caught and released. The
fish were all from ten to sixteen inches long.
The kids went crazy. Most
of the fish survived the ordeal and those that didn’t are on the menu
at St. Charles. The kids were each awarded the 2002 Profile Bowmen
Fishing Derby medal.
It sure has been a joy to represent the NH Trappers on this most worth while of public service projects. Wherever I go and people talk fishing I bring up the NH Trappers Association’s / St. Charles Fishing Project. Every year the NHTA continues to enjoy open water and ice fishing events with all the wonderful kids at St Charles.
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