ESPN Freshwater

For successful outings, young anglers may need some assistance conquering general squeamishness about bait.

They will learn about bait somewhere, and you certainly don't want them learning about bait on the street.

Except for really rainy periods, there really isn't much bait there anyway. It only leads to an embarrassing Vendo-bait habit. Bait should be treated with responsibly and with respect.

However, bait can be a ticklish topic. Afterall, in all likelihood, something is going to die. Caterpillars turn to butterflies, and well, tickle.

Discuss generally acceptable bait: worms, minnows, crayfish, grasshoppers, crickets. And generally unacceptable bait: spiders, slugs, stinkbugs.

Be prepared for those tricky, uneasy questions like, "What bait can I put in my pockets?"

Don't be afraid to share that you experimented when you were young — with a crayfish. Once.

When using live bait, we rationalize and console ourselves that we are just active facilitators in an inevitable ecological food chain. If you can get the kids to sit quietly at the lake in the evening, one can even hear this chain clink.

Bass would have been eating minnows anyway. There are other creatures that would have jumped, crawled, or fallen into, or flown too close to the lake and been eaten that day.

Bait fishermen are just opportunists serving up haute cuisine on a mahogany plank, garnished with split-shot parsley as a means of getting in on the action of that constant prey/predator relationship, rewarding aggressive eating behavior, like throwing a herring to a trained sea lion.

My five-year-old boy was still sympathetic and occasionally dumping our bucket of minnows in our pond (check regulations and know what you may have in the bucket), but he took a great leap toward understanding bait and the food chain one afternoon while reeling in one of his many, usual bluegills.

Just as he began to lift the bluegill from the water with his pole, the water erupted and in the blink of an eye, a huge bass swallowed the bluegill, ripped it from the hook and soaked two very startled fishermen.

There was no time to feel empathy for the bluegill, just pure astonishment by the close proximity of a very effective predator. I cringed and waited for my son's reaction to the miniature version of the seal/great white shark video sequence that I had managed to shade him from with remote control.

Fortunately, I didn't have to wait long: "Let's do it again!"

On the other hand, my three-year-old girl will hand me night crawlers, but I'm careful to make my baiting movements rapid, with my back turned, and quickly cast. With her personality, she might suddenly demand I return that crawler and if not, I'd better have a good reason.

It is puzzling what they become attached to sometimes. When "Flippy" the purple beta passed away, my wife and I did the ol' switcheroo after a covert trip a pet store. We are currently experimenting with cryogenics in our upright deep freezer with Flippy #5. But when a bluegill died in the large aquarium in the garage, both kids yelled, "Bait!"

Once young anglers gain confidence with their abilities and knowledge about fish behavior, lures can be introduced. One should not become bait dependent. You need to be able to step away from the bait. But you don't want to abandon your heritage either. Even accomplished veteran anglers acknowledge that there is a time and place when bait can be just the ticket.

Whew. Now that I've broached this ethical question with our two, maybe my wife can handle the other talks.