Fishing Rod Relay

Here is a fun relay game that I came up with to play with the Beavers at Camp Opemikon this past weekend. In a slightly altered form it would be appropriate for just about any aged Scout. At this age it is best to do as a father-and-son relay (or "parent-and-child" if your colony has girls). For older kids you could do real races with heats down to first, second and third place. For Beavers it was not really about winning - just about having fun. The fathers did a lot of the work, but we encouraged them to try as much as possible to just help the Beaver do it himself, and then only do it after a good effort was given. And in the end we did not really keep track of who finished first - but rather, we made sure to give each boy kudos in some way or another. e.g. in each heat one boy would get "furthest distance", another would get "closest to the mark", and another might get "straightest cast".

For Beaver age kids you start out with a rod and reel for each team in the heat - we did 3 at a time. The reel is already attached to the rod, and strung with fishing line, but the line is not strung through the eyes in the rod, and there is no tackle on the end of the line. For older kids you may want to consider having them start with the reel not yet attached to the rod, and have them attach it. Or even go so far as to have them string the reel with line first, and then attach it to the rod. For Beavers it was enough to just have them string the line through the eyes in the rod. Beforehand we showed the fathers how to tie a fisherman's knot.

Just start them out with their rod and reel, as well as a swivel, spinner (with no hook), and bobber/float. We used the biggest swivels we could find mainly to add weight for casting, since there was no hook. Please do not use lead weights - ever. Lead in the environment is a bad thing. We used the smallest bobbers because they would be less likely to break when casting on land.

Basically, it was just "on your mark, get set, go" and then the teams scrambled to put their rods together and finally cast into a hoola hoop at the other end of a short field. We did three heats and each one took about 15 minutes to complete. At the end of it we went down to the wharf and did some real fishing - and even caught a bunch of fish so we got to follow it up with a lesson in cleaning fish (and as an aside, a short lesson in knife safety).

We got some great feedback from the parents - they all thought it was a really good game. It sure was fun to watch. Unfortunately both of my boys were being fussy at the time and they both refused to participate.