Hooked on Family: How Power-Pole makes fishing with kids easier

This guest column is brought to you by Capt. Scott Brown. Brown is a Florida Keys-based guide and a member of the Power-Pole Pro Staff program since 2016. He recently launched Hooked on Family as a way to share his fishing adventures with his kids in order to inspire other parents to get their own children outdoors.

Anything we can do to help save time and energy out on the water is critical, especially with kids on board. Most of that time and energy is dedicated towards mentoring our kids and maintaining their safety.

I’m always asking myself how we as parents, spend less time worrying and preforming menial boat tasks, and spend more time catching fish with our kids?

Anchoring a Boat
In most cases we anchor to hold our vessel in a certain place, to fish, or fix a problem. With that being said, if we’re fishing while anchored, we must think about maintaining our stealth and silence, especially if we are in shallow water.  

“Fixing a problem” usually takes the form of getting hung up in structure, limbs or shoreline and moving to them getting untangled and resetting your anchor. It’s no myth that kids are casting and getting hung up constantly.

Ultimately, we anchor to help our kids land fish while staying in the zone where we can continue to entertain our kids with more fish. Luckily for us parent anglers, there are alternate pieces of equipment that can anchor a vessel all while saving us time and energy.

Time and Energy
My kids can last out on the water for half a day, depending on how much entertainment we can find. On average, we travel for an hour looking for new spots to adventure. We stop at the sandbar which takes up another two hours which leaves us an hour of fishing give or take. Actual fishing time with kids comes down to a grand total of 35 minutes before they start asking to “go back home.”

With that being said, you have a narrow window to get to your destination without spooking the fish, set up and start looking for your targets all while keeping the kids entertained. The more time you spend untangling lures and drifting off spots by opening hatches and taking out anchors, the less likely you are to be successful with your kids and land that fish of a lifetime.

You might be saying to yourself “I don’t need a shallow water anchor, I keep ole tons of fun conveniently located on the deck of my boat.”

Cool, I get it, but what you’re failing to realize is the amount of time spent altogether anchoring. If you’re a veteran angler, you’re taking into consideration  “how is the boat going to swing?”

“How much line do I need to let out?”

“Is the fish going to wrap up on the anchor line?”

“Which cleat do I secure it too?”

“Is everyone clear of the anchor line for safety reasons?”

By the time you deploy your anchor, secure it and rush back up to where your kids are, it’s been around two minutes. With a Power-Pole, you can achieve the same thing in five seconds, use less energy, all while maintaining attention on your kids. It’s imperative that a parent angler stays up on the bow with their kids and helps solve whatever time sensitive problems they encounter as efficiently as possible. 

How we use our Power-Pole
Our day starts off with dry launching our 18 ft skiff down a gravel path, with no dockage or concrete ramp. My four year old can’t throw out an anchor or tie a rope to the mangroves, but what he can do is hit the down button on my Power-Pole key fob. Depending on the tide, it’s a quick ride to our favorite flats to search for tailing bonefish. The skiff is already loaded down with toys and snacks so shedding the anchor weight and rope is vital for poling into shallow water. We get there thirty minutes before the water starts filling in so we can stake out our boat and walk into the sandy bottom.

After we have wade fished for the tailing bones and the water has flooded in, we focus on having fun at an adjacent sandbar. All I do is throw the kids in the boat, walk the boat over to the sand bar and hit my key fob one more time to anchor in our new spot. No mess, no getting in the boat to stow the anchor, just total efficiency. When we’re done with the sandbar we like to pick off a couple of snapper in the deeper mangrove channels.

We account for the current and which way the boat is going to swing so that way my son can make accurate casts into the mangroves and pull out his favorite fish. He usually gets hung up in the roots a couple of times, so all I do is hit my key fob and pull the boat closer to the mangroves , get unstuck and push myself away and anchor with the touch of a button. No starting my motor so that we can maintain total efficiency and stealth.Quickly, we’re back to slinging snapper into the boat.

Our Power-Pole has given us the ability to stake out at the touch of a button in any bottom and catch the top three fish of the lower keys as a family. What’s even more important is it gives me the ability to mentor and develop our kids on the water with ease and efficiency. I stand by this brand and company and will continue to support them as long as they say true to their vision and quality. It’s very clear to us that “as a family” Power-Pole takes our time out on the water seriously.

We are thankful to be able to own such a piece of technology that aids us in being able to efficiently pass the tradition of fishing on to our small kids.

For more tips on parenting and fishing, subscribe to the Hooked on Family YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcOQqqCHMNtJyyhWVgdgCsA