Fishermen fill in for fathers at war

Kailee Skinner dropped her line into the water and pressed her small thumb against a button on the reel.

"Pull a little line out," Art Kelm said as he bent to observe his young charge.

Moments later Kailee abandoned the fishing pole and was bounding about the boat. Then the exhuberant 6-year-old climbed into fisherman's seat next to where Kelm was standing and grinned up at him.

"I'm going to catch a little one," she said.

Grandfather and granddaughter?

Nope. They had met less than an hour earlier when Kailee, her sister Madisyn and their mom Angie climbed aboard Art and Terri Helm's fishing boat at the Pueblo Reservoir.

The fun Saturday for the Skinner girls and about 50 other children from Fort Carson families was courtesy of about 50 strangers, mostly master fishermen from a handful of Colorado fishing clubs. Most of the children's fathers are deployed to Iraq or elsewhere, although a handful of soldiers home between war tours also took part in the fourth annual "Take a Kid Fishing Day."

"It's wonderful to know that there are people who care and understand the military lifestyle," Angie Skinner said.

For many of the kids, it was their first fishing adventure and their first time on a boat. For others, such as 16-year-old Tim Balboa, it was a chance to improve his fishing skills. As he headed out on the water with fisherman Steve Ehrman of Littleton, he said: "I want to learn how to catch bigger fish."

Ehrman said he hoped he could pass on his knowledge of reading the water, which "will tell us where the fish are."
The idea for the fishing day was hatched on Father's Day 2005, when Dave Kooser was returning from the reservoir after a day of fishing with his son. He heard on the radio about a Fort Carson soldier who'd been killed in Iraq, and wondered whether the soldier had children.

That led to the idea of taking soldiers' children fishing, but Kooser hadn't served in the military and didn't know where to start.
"I could come up with boats and fishermen, but I didn't know anything about the military end," he said.

But a Colorado Walleye Association buddy, Frank Weston, did. Kooser and Weston, a retired Army major, began planning and the first fishing trip was a year later, on Father's Day weekend 2006. The fishing clubs partner with Fort Carson Family Housing, several companies and other agencies to pull it off.

Everything is taken care: the kids and family members were bussed from Fort Carson to the reservoir, where they got T-shirts, water bottles, snacks and life jackets, and were paired with fishermen. Boxed chicken lunches were delivered at noon, and awards presented before the buses headed back to Fort Carson.

Not even Saturday's cool, rainy weather could dampen the enthusiasm, as fishermen pulled rain ponchos from their storage areas and wrapped them around the kids.

"Perfect," said Coleman Barron, a fisherman from Cascade. "This is the ultimate weather for fishing."

Barron was waiting aboard his pontoon boat for a family that had been delayed by a phone call - from Iraq.

It wasn't the only call from overseas on Saturday. Angie Skinner's phone rang about 9:30 a.m. and it was Sgt. 1st Class James Skinner calling from Iraq where he is serving with the 2nd Brigade Combat Team of the 4th Infantry Division.

Kailee and Madisyn got to talk to their dad as they fished and then Angie got the phone.

"Daddy says it's been 14 years since he fished," she called out to the girls.

The Helms, who live in Pueblo West and are members of the Walleye club, tended to Madisyn and Kailee while mom talked on the phone.

After she hung up, she explained: "He didn't know we were going to be out here today. He asked what we were doing today and I said we're fishing on a boat."

Then she turned to her daughter's and said, "Me and daddy fished on one of our first dates. We were 15."

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