I am a 16 year-old avid fisherman.  I have had a love for fishing since I was able to walk.  Whenever I was just a little boy, my grandpa took a stick and tied a piece of fishing line to it and taught me how to fish, ever since then I have been hooked.

My favorite place to fish is Gandy Creek, West Virginia.  I have fished in Gandy ever since I was able to walk. I prefer to fish mostly in small rivers and streams. I will always fish in Gandy because it is my home river and I know all the good holes and how to fish the stream.  I can fish with a regular fishing pole or with a fly rod.  I am also able to tie my own flies and fish with them.  My grandpa, dad and uncle also love to fish with me on a daily/weekly basis. 

The biggest fish I ever caught was a 23 ½ inch brown trout that weighed over 5 lbs.  I caught the brown trout up Gandy at a place called the Seri Hole.  I knew the fish had been there for a very, very long time.  I had been fishing since I was seven years old, I had kept it a secret until I caught him.  Whenever I got the bite, I did not know if it was the big one or if it was just a little one hitting hard.  Thankfully, it was the big one, I fought him for approximately fifteen minutes to get him hooked well.  I fought, and fought until got him close enough to the edge where I could use my net to catch him so he wouldn’t get away.  As soon as I got him in my net, I ran down the river bank screaming and very excited.  I made it to my grandma and grandpas house and they were also excited for me.  As soon as the adrenalin rush ran out, I called the taxidermist to see what I had to do to preserve the fish for mounting.  After I saw how much it would cost, and how long it would take, I took him the following day.  My parents had to pay almost five hundred dollars to get the fish mounted for me, but this is something I will always have to look back at and remember that wonderful day.

I have fulfilled one of my dream fish to catch, the next will be a brook trout.  I have caught several small brook trout and returned them to the water so they can get bigger.  The biggest brook trout that I ever caught was about seventeen inches, but I also released him.  Besides the brown trout I think that the brook trout is one of the prettiest fish there is.  The brown and the brook trout are both very smart fish, that’s why they are so hard to catch.  Both fish also have the same similarities as far as where they hide in the water and what type of fishing bait they hit on.

Fishing is still one of my favorite things to do in my spare time.  I have the number saved in my phone to see when and where they stock in fishing season.  I also go to the fish hatchery a couple times a year to look at all the fish, and sometimes if I ask they let me feed them.  I hope to become a division of natural resources officer one day because I think that I would be good at this.