Urban Fishing Hole Hooks D.C. School Kids

One of the more loosely kept secrets in Washington is that there are fish in the shallow, concrete pool at Constitution Gardens at the corner of 17th Street and Constitution Avenue NW. Early mornings you might catch a flyrodder down there casting from the banks for small bass and sunfish before work, though the Park Service discourages angling during the day when tourists are afoot.

How the fish initially got into the big, urban enclosure is a bit of a mystery, but these days the population is boosted by a spring stocking every year in advance of the arrival of 300-odd D.C. school kids for a morning of fishing from the banks, sponsored by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.

Youngsters from three downtown schools descended last week and the outcome was better than it is some years. "Last year we didn't have anybody catch a fish," said a teacher from Ross Elementary. This year dozens of his charges did. Chalk it up to good weather and good help from volunteers, including one fellow who flew in all the way from Colorado to help out.

Scott Gilmore is co-founder of a Denver operation called Environmental Learning for Kids, and worked closely there with Ken Salazar, the former Colorado attorney general and ex-U.S. senator who now is Interior secretary, which explains how Gilmore got the call.

It seems a long way to come to thread nightcrawlers onto hooks for 10-year-olds, but Gilmore was enthusiastic and undiminished. He was the first, indeed, to discern that the bass and sunfish had probably gone deep to avoid the bright sunlight, so he took the bobber off young Blake Snyder's line and had him let his bait sink to the bottom, where he was quickly rewarded with a bite.

Some attractive young Fish & Wildlife Service staffers were kept busy untangling lines and doling out bait. "Where's that worm lady?" bellowed one young angler when his nightcrawler got stripped during an inattentive moment.

It was all refreshingly informal for a Washington political moment, and the mood did not change much when Salazar himself turned up at lunchtime, accompanied by senior White House adviser Valerie Jarrett, to sign an order establishing an Office of Youth in Natural Resources at Interior, whose first mission will be to implement the administration's new Youth Conservation Corps.

Some 5,000 jobs will result for youngsters across the country this summer, Salazar said. He quoted President Franklin D. Roosevelt, creator of the first national Civilian Conservation Corps, who said back in the day that, "More important than material gains will be the moral and spiritual value of such work." Still true.

It's no secret that the town is largely ga-ga over the Obama crowd. Jarrett didn't hurt the cause when she stood smiling in the hot sun for 20 minutes in her office attire, waiting to say a few words to a passel of kids about her responsibilities as chair of the new White House Council on Women and Girls. Obama's conservation corps, unlike Roosevelt's, which was all male, will definitely have jobs for both genders, she said.

(When she finished speaking, by the way, Jarrett and an aide walked back to the White House, just as you and I might do. No limo, no sirens, no armed escort. "It's only two blocks," explained the woman considered the president's closest adviser. Told that such earthly behavior is frowned on in Washington, she laughed and wagged a finger. "We're changing Washington!")

Among co-sponsors of the annual fishing event is an outfit called the Recreational Boating and Fishing Foundation, created 11 years ago after Congress ordered Interior to look for ways to reverse a worrisome decline in interest in outdoor activities.

Frank Peterson, who heads RBFF, said state and local conservation efforts are largely funded by special taxes on fishing, hunting and boating equipment, and when people stop buying that gear and spend their money instead on computers and iPods, conservation feels the pinch.

RBFF sponsors a Web site, http://www.takemefishing.org, that offers hints and tips on how to get kids out onto lakes and rivers and bays, but no Web site can duplicate the thrilling immediacy of the tug of a little fish at the end of your line, which is addictive in its own way.

AnaRae Howe-Flint, from Ross Elementary, had never before caught a fish. Then, suddenly, she was an old hand. "I caught one 30 minutes ago and one five minutes ago and now this one!" she said. Imani Pugh, a fourth-grader from John Eaton Elementary, caught two, including a scrappy little bass.

Too soon it ended. "Lunch!" someone hollered, and 300-plus supercharged prepubescents went scrambling for the tents and their ham sandwiches. "Can we fish some more?" pleaded one boy, leading a pack of others headed for the rods as they choked down the last crumbs of their cookies.

But no, it was time for speeches, then back to school. Maybe a seed was sown, though -- another season's promise in the ground. Where there's seeds, there's hope.