Topic: Great Turnout today at Battle Ground Lake! (Read 2937 times)

May 19, 2013, 01:13:07 AM

Thanks so much to all our NWKA bothers who pitched in to make todays's HOW event the best yet. Noah did an awesome job organizing it, Anthony created great cabobs for lunch and Wobbler, Paul, Isaac, Langston, Nate, Craig and Mark Collette all did a fantastic job helping the vets get geared up and helped them find fish. Such great generosity in loaning kayaks (Isaac brought 8!), rods, pfds, tackle, etc. Mark drove about 5 hours round trip to help out and brought lots of cool hand made prizes for the vets. Gentleman you are the best!

We had Iraq, Afgan, Desert Storm and Viet Nam vets, three spouses and three kids ages 12, 6 and 5! Total of about 15 participants. The fishing highlight of the day was the 12 year old, named Langston believe it or not, caught the biggest fish of everyone, a nice 16" rainbow. Mark awarded him a hand carved Bonker as his prize.

For me the best moment when one spouse teared up telling me how amazed she was at how wonderful all our volunteers were and how much this helped her husband. He had told me he wasn't sure he would be able to come today since he had a knee replacement a week ago. Turned out he not only showed up with his walker, he suited up and with help from our awesome volunteers was able to board his yak, paddle around and catch some fish. He was so appreciative and wants to help us grow. Another vet asked if he could help find donors to defray our expenses each month.

All in all, it was a fantastic day. I'll try to post some pics, if any of you have some good ones, please share with us.

May 19, 2013, 06:37:00 AM #1

Thank you to all who volunteered and for the opportunity to be part of it. I have fished Battleground Lake since I was a kid and it was awesome to see so many vets and volunteers in my neck of the woods. Lots and lots of fish were caught and lots of smiling faces. I can't wait to do it again.

May 19, 2013, 08:36:03 AM #2

A great time ...
This was my 1st HOW event and I have to say that it was fun, informative, and very satisfying. A very positive time.

I'm downloading and editing some pictures and video that will be posted later today.

Thanks to all the people that donated so much effort to make this happen. It was good to be a small part of such a great event.

Love the "resident" eagle swooping down so close to people out fishing. A real American icon.
By the way----Langston received the carved fish trophy (not a bonker-unless he got one later) for the biggest fish caught,which was also his very 1st fish ever. Pretty cool