Social studies teacher Nathan Geiken has done it again. Earlier this year, Geiken started Walking Club , and now he’s come up with another way to keep students active and provide them with a potentially life-long hobby: Fishing Club.
The fishing club held its first meeting on April 1, marking the first step in reviving an outdoor pastime that Geiken fears is fading among local youth. Despite Gretna being surrounded by various bodies of water, Geiken noticed the banks growing emptier each year.
“We have a lot of good fishing areas around Gretna, and I just see less and less students who are fishing,” he said. “Hopefully, besides just learning to fish, people get a love for the outdoors.”
Since then, members have met three times. At the first meeting, students practiced tying common fishing knots. The second took them outside to practice casting, and at the third meeting, the group learned to identify the fish most common in Gretna — bluegill, largemouth bass and channel catfish — as well as the rigs used to catch each.
“The hardest thing for me to learn so far has been tying the different knots,” junior Sydnee Barr said. “It’s been a struggle to memorize how to do them. I didn’t realize how many steps there were.”
Starting the club in April wasn’t Geiken’s original plan.
“I’ve been planning this club all year,” he said. “I was talking to the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission, hoping to get it so that nobody would need a fishing license for the club. Between canceled meetings and the crunch of time, it just didn’t work out that well, so we’re just going to try to run with what we’ve got.”
As a result, students 16 and older will need a valid fishing license before the club can get out to the water. Fishing licenses can be purchased online from the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission. With that taken care of, Geiken hopes to get members out to Gretna Crossing or Wehrspann Lake for several evening fishing sessions before the school year ends. The club will host its first outing at Gretna Crossing Pond tomorrow from 5–7 p.m.
“I’m really excited to actually go out fishing,” Barr said. “I think it’ll be a relaxing time to hang out with friends outside instead of being cooped up indoors. It’ll give us a chance to interact more and help each other out.”
Geiken hopes that students can find a way to enjoy the outdoors, even if it means bringing technology along for the ride.
“Being outdoors isn’t just being outside,” he said. “You can be outside and multitask. You might be talking to some friends or others, and you can still be on your phone as you’re fishing. I do it all the time.”
Going into the next school year, the goal for Fishing Club remains the same: get students to the water and keep them coming back.
“We’ll get out to a lake and catch some fish together,” he said. “I believe in the saying, ‘You give a man a fish, he eats for a day. You teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime.’”