I have been fishing since I was five. I thought you would like to hear about the largemouth bass I caught on a hot day in Florida on July 20, 2005. Using my Ugly Stick, I was flipping shiners in a pond.

One time I cast a little too hard, throwing the shiner off the hook. As I watched the shiner swim, there was a huge splash and then a bass grabbed the bait on the surface. I could see the size of the bass and knew right away that I wasn't about to go home until I caught it.

I put another shiner on the hook and cast to the same spot where the bass hit the bait. Sure enough, I got a reaction strike and it was a hard fight but I was able to pull it up. The bass weighed about nine pounds.players.

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By Gita M. Smith

Photo: Wyatt Robinson uses two hands to grab hold of his 15-inch rainbow trout.

From one side of America to the other, you can find rainbow trout in cold streams and lakes. If you want a fish that will give you a fight when it is hooked, but also tastes yummy on your plate, go after “rainbows.”

Rainbow trout - sometimes called redband trout because of the red-pink streak down their side - are related to salmon. But unlike salmon, they can spend their entire life in fresh water. Here’s how to recognize a rainbow trout: They have small black spots along their back, dorsal fin and caudal fin. They also have a pink streak that runs from the gill cover to the caudal fin. The color of a rainbow's back varies from blue or green to a yellow-green or brown, and they average from 12 to 18 inches in length. But some rainbows found in the Great Lakes have even measured up to 32 inches.

If you catch a trout in a large lake or in salt water, and if it is silvery all over, chances are you have caught a steelhead trout. This trout migrates between fresh and salt water.

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By Gita M. Smith

PHOTO: Nicholas May caught his 35-pound striped bass when he was 10, out on the Atlantic Ocean.

Want to go after some of the biggest fish you’ll ever see? Then get ready to go fishing for striped bass this summer. The world record striped bass, caught in 1982, weighed 78.5 pounds and was 53 inches long. It took one hour and 40 minutes to land that striper!

Kids all over North America enjoy fishing for stripers because they are found in oceans as well as fresh water lakes and rivers. Nicholas May caught a 35-pound striper for the first time when he was 10. He went out on the Atlantic Ocean on the charter boat “Misty” with his family, off the coast of Rhode Island. The boat left the Port of Galilee, and Nicholas threw his line out with a squid jig on the end. His fish measured 38 inches -- that’s more than three feet long!

Striped bass prefer moving water which offers them some protection as well as panfish and other food being swept along in the currents. That’s why you will often find stripers on rivers near dams where there is rushing water and a hard current. Of course, that makes it hard to control a boat, so always wear a life preserver when fishing for stripers and be sure that an experienced adult is steering your boat.

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By James Spiess, Age 14

I started fishing when I was about 4 years old, but I only caught blue gill and small bass. When I got older I started to catch musky, northern, large mouth and small mouth bass, and large crappie.

The day I caught the large mouth bass I was fishing on Red Rock Lake. It was early morning about 7:10 a.m. I threw out a dare devil spoon to try to catch a few northern, and maybe a bass. I caught a northern but threw it back because it was too small, only about 2 pounds.

A few hours later, about 9:10, I was kind of getting sick of fishing for northern, so I put a bobber on my line and a shiner minnow and threw it out onto the water hoping to catch a few crappies.

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By Gita Smith

How often does a boy catch a fish and win thousands of dollars? Not very often.

But Ben Ibarra, who lives in Baytown, Texas, did just that. He won a fishing contest called StarKids Rodeo, which is held every year.

This past September, on Labor Day, Ben cast his line into the water, and he let it fall to the bottom. He felt a sheepshead (a striped fish with a hard mouth) starting to chew on the bait. Ben reeled the fish in, taking a couple of minutes to get the big guy to the boat.
To Benís delight, the fish weighed 9 pounds, 10 ounces on the boat scale.

By the time Ben brought his fish to the official weigh-in, it had lost a little, and it weighed in at 8 pounds 14 ounces. That was still enough to put Ben in the winnerís spot for the contest. His prize was $50,000 for his college education.

Here is how Ben remembers that day: "I was on a boat and my dad was driving. It was 9 o'clock in the morning on the last day of the contest. My sister was winning the contest. She already had the biggest sheepshead, 7 pounds and 12 ounces."

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