Gone Fishing

The Klamath County Transition Program (KCTP), which is part of the Klamath County School district, is putting on an event called "Gone Fishing".  At KCTP, we serve students ages 18-21 with moderate to severe disabilities and we help them transition from a structured school environment into the real world. We focus on post-secondary education (some of our students attend KCC), independent living skills (cooking, cleaning, personal hygiene, etc), community inclusion (community volunteer opportunities), and pre-employment training (interview skills, how to write a resume/cover letter, as well as specific skills such as making espresso drinks at our multiple student-led businesses). The main focus of our program is to help students with special needs lead a meaningful and fulfilling life, whether that means to eventually get a job and become completely independent, or simply able to care for themselves in the hopes of living semi-independently in the future. Here is a link to a short 1 min video overview of our program if you are interested: 
https://drive.google.com/file/ d/ 1ROl2IxjhrZZeHMvIW7qnY5uTHOKAA _XH/view?usp=sharing


That being said, we will be hosting an event called “Gone Fishing” this summer on Saturday August 4th at the Moore Park Pavilion from 9am-3pm. The event is a free fishing day open to students involved in special programs (GOALs, Bridges, Alternative, or Transition) within the County and City School District. We are teaming up with Pond Hopper Nation to give our students the opportunity to get outdoors and learn all about fishing. We are hoping to get enough donations to be able to provide rods, reels, bait, t-shirts, and sunglasses to every student that registers. 


The event will include teaching students how to fish, i.e. how to set up their rod, how to cast and reel, and hopefully how to land a fish.  If they catch a fish, we will have a fish cleaning station where students can learn about the biology of the fish as well as watch our pros filet them and put them on ice for the students to take home later. We will also have the local ODFW and the BLM involved in the event. There will be a variety of outdoor games and activities as well as lunch. The Klamath Falls Police Department and Fire Department have generously volunteered to do the barbecuing and help with the different activities. Our goal for this event is to give our population of students the opportunity to learn and participate in a great outdoor recreational activity that they can continue for their rest of their lives. Fishing truly has no boundaries and we want to be able to share that with our students. This will be the first time we have ever hosted an event like this and as far as I know, it's never been done in the basin, or Oregon for that matter, and we hope to make it a success so we can make it an annual thing.