How to Make Fishing Fun with Kid-Friendly Fishing Activities

You love fishing, and you don’t need much more than some quiet, the dew on nearby leaves, and a body of water teeming with fish to have a great day out. But if you’re being honest, you can see why some young kids may not be immediately drawn to fishing. There are often early mornings involved, plenty of waiting for something to happen, and the possibility of no reward at the end of it all. That on its own can be a tough sell for some children. Thankfully, there are plenty of outstanding kid-friendly fishing activities, including fishing games for kids and outdoor fun for children near water. These fun things to do while fishing proves that it's one of the great summer activities with kids that can help reel kids in and turn them into future anglers, hook, line, and sinker!

Here are 8 awesome and easy kid-friendly fishing activities to try during your next fishing trip with kids! But first, learn how to fish safely with kids!

1. Explore Nature

Using a bird call ID app, listen and learn about the wildlife high up in the trees around your favorite fishing spot. But don’t only look up! Look down for worms, crickets, and other critters, and then consider collecting sticks, leaves, acorns, and stones to create a fishing trip nature memory box your kids can carry like your well-stocked tackle box!

2. Skip Stones

Disturbing the water right where and when you are casting is not ideal, of course, but taking breaks to skip stones along the surface of still water can provide the kind of simple memories that will put a warm, soft, happy glow on fishing trips with kids—memories you and they will cherish

3. Photography

Buy your kids a disposable camera or let them use a smartphone to revel in and capture the beauty and wonder of the natural world around you as you fish together. Show them that fishing is more than just casting and catching—that it’s about being a part of all that surrounds you. Capture the dappled sunlight through the trees and the changing of the colors on the branches and the ground, and allow them to photograph the day so that you can see the world through their eyes while enjoying some spring break family fishing.

4. Educational fishing activities

With the help of a book about fish and their habitats, make fishing fun for kids by using it as an opportunity to learn something new together. From the fact that salmon swim upstream to discovering how many fish can be in a ‘school,’ these beginner fishing activities for families make fishing fun and educational for everyone.

5. Picnics

Eating sandwiches and snacks outside is how to make fishing fun for kids. With their favorite foods and juice boxes in tow and the promise of a picnic on the schedule, they will be more excited to head out to the water for a few hours even if they aren’t yet ready to start fishing themselves.

6. Storytime

When my kids were little, I would make up silly stories about the things we were looking at—from Egyptian hieroglyphics in a museum to statues in a park. Decades later, they still remember and laugh about those memories. One of the fun things to do while fishing is to give the toads, salamanders, birds, and even the fish swimming below in the lake or stream funny personas, backstories, and fantastical lives through spontaneous storytelling that will make your kids laugh and get them more interested in coming back out to fish with you again and again and again.

7. Fishing Games for Kids

Friendly competitions like who can catch the heaviest or the longest fish, who catches the most, and even silly contests like, who can catch the most colorful or reel in the tiniest fish, are the kind of easy kid-friendly fishing activities that will turn your children into your fishing buddies in no time at all! Check out more ways to create fishing games for kids no matter where you are.

8. Water Play

If there’s a safe, shallow area of the lake or stream near where you are fishing, allow your kids to play in the water, make sand castles on the shore, build a towering rock tower, and splash around safely with a life vest on Outdoor fun for children near water will make them want to keep coming back with you on your fishing trips and eventually, they will begin to associate fishing with some real fun, and that’s exactly what you want!

Check out even more ideas for making fishing fun for kids!