A Youth Movement: Fishing With Kyle Patrick

My love of fishing started 16 years ago, in 2004, when I was already well into my thirties.

Thank goodness I loved it or I might never have seen Pete on the weekends and this website would have no contributions by yours truly. I think we can all agree that would be a huge loss.

It wasn’t easy for Pete to teach me everything he knew right away. With limited time on the water teaching wasn’t his main objective. He handed me a spinning rod, but that made me feel inadequate so I begged him to teach me how to use a baitcasting reel.

“With only 84 days on the water this year, I am not going to teach you, just to have it backlash and have to spend time picking it out,” said my loveable curmudgeon.

I begged and pleaded to have him teach me and finally -- for the sake of our marriage -- he reached out to a guide on the Potomac and set up a day on the water. In a few hours, I was casting well and mostly backlash-free.

With that checked off my list it was time to learn specific techniques.

Most of my learning took place by mimicking Pete’s actions. It’s a miracle I learned anything correctly, not because he’s a bad fisherman but because he is left-handed and I am right-handed.

I continued to learn from the guides at Anglers Inn. They are all very patient and knowledgeable and happy to help.

Between Pete and the guides we’ve fished with, most of my teachers have been older than me, or at least more experienced, but just because someone is younger that doesn’t mean they can’t help you out.

On my recent trip to El Salto, I had the opportunity to fish with Kyle Patrick (founder and managing director of the Douglas Rods Big Money Opens) who was barely out of diapers when I started fishing. I wasn’t surprised to learn that he is 23 years old, but I was slightly shocked that his parents are younger than me! Despite his youth, he fishes all the time and has developed an incredible passion and aptitude for the sport.

We were pitching to trees and in front of hyacinths and he noticed I was struggling a little. Kyle’s explanation and demonstration of how to be more efficient made a lot more sense than how I was taught in the past. In just a few minutes, I was better able to present my bait.

I’d known that my pitching was imperfect for a long time, but Pete’s only comment was: “You do that wrong.” Communication is the key to a good marriage, and Pete is a pretty good communicator, but in this case he wasn’t able to make me understand how to “do it right.”

I commend Kyle for speaking up, for taking the time to notice I was doing something incorrectly and choosing to say something to help me fix my poor technique. Rather than dismiss or ignore my handicap he chose to help and improve my game.

Kyle’s passion for fishing has made him a huge success in Upstate NY. In 2020 he won 16 tournaments and qualified for the Bassmaster team Trail Championship through the Empire Team Trail. As you read this, he’s on Florida’s Harris Chain competing in that event.

The tools to Kyle’s success, besides being on the water all the time, are the Douglas spinning and casting rods he uses. He has incredible faith in the rods and wrote that “Douglas Outdoors without a doubt provides a rod that enables confidence in me when I hold them.”

Just because Kyle is young, just because he could be my kid, just because I have been fishing longer than him, doesn’t mean we couldn’t learn from each other. I’m not sure what I might have taught Kyle, but at the very least I assume he picked up the Robbins family motto: “You’re only young once, but you can be immature forever.

Good luck Kyle and thank you for helping your elders in a time of need. Here’s hoping you get your chance at making the Bassmaster Classic.

Readers, don’t forget, you can learn something from everyone you fish with – young/old, male/female, etc. Don’t ever stop improving.