Kimbo, I am the Chairman of the NAFC Ohio Chapter and I would like to welcome you to the Club and the Ohio Chapter.  Amy, the Chapter's Secretary, told me about you and you have been activated on the Ohio Chapter site.  Hope you visit there often.   You will find with this Chapter a lot of good people, some, if not all will be willing to help you out.  On our Chapter site there is a Mission Statement and Bylaws for the Ohio Chapter, and in our Mission Statement that is what we are striving for as well, helping our kids.   We have children in our group, also, that range from 2 years old to 16 years old.   We have adults in every age group as well.   I hope you take advantage of coming to our meetings and meets.    We have a meet coming up this weekend July 25, 26, & 27, 2008, at Rayland Marina, in Rayland, Ohio, which is right on the Ohio River.  You are more than welcome to attend.    I will see what I can gather up in tackle as well, and get it to you. 

will see if anything left in my bag of tricks..lol

Kim,  Tonight I am running our 4th annual kids fishing derby here in New Bremen, ohio. each year it gets bigger and bigger. The 1st year we had only 26 participants. last year 117. I expect that many or more tonight. All prizes are through donations. We even have 2 pro anglers attending tonight to help out, give tips ect, It is a whole lot of work to put this together, but it is rewarding. My suggestion to you is to get yourself connected to a local park or bass club and organize a kids fishing derby. You will be surprized at the local support you will receive when it is for the kids and there will be no profit for the organizers. By putting on a kids derby with prizes and handouts and door prizes you will be putting fishing poles and tackle into the kids hands that they can keep and get started on a lifetime of fishing. Good luck with this.

Welcome aboard Kim, I'm sure we can do something to help out. We could probably set a date for one of our upcoming planning meetings that everyone could bring some stuff to donate to your kids. You could either come and pick the stuff up or mabe one of our members could bring it to you. I'm hoping to do a kids fishing derby myself here in the Willard,Ohio area next spring, mabe get some of our members to come along and help out the kids....  BD

It seems like yestersday I wrote my first post, but now spring is here lakes are getin ready to turn green and warm up,  people are fishing, Wooooo  Oh yes, Thanks to Everyone in the clubs the dealers the retailers prizes are starting to come, We have 150 kids for the Derby this year, Boy it would be Great to be able to give everyone one of them  the fellin you get when you catch fish, the really big fish, I told my fishing buddie Jim, last time I went fishin at my other buddies farm pond, My right arm got sore from catching so many big Bass, but the only proplem that day was Im Still Lookin for the big one the Ohio State Record! you guys that live to fish, you know what Im talkin about, I catch and release 95% of the time, well anyways the derby is, Aug 9 2009 all morning.  Someday I would love to take a kid his first time fishing on a boat and record the whole thing live for everyone to see how much joy this brings Kids!