Liam

Celebrate National Fishing Week with this rod and reel giveaway

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The clock is ticking!

Only a week or so remains before it is National Fishing Week across the country (July 2nd to July 10th). It’s a time when Canadians from coast to coast to coast will be able to wet a line—in many places without the requirement of a licence—and connect with one of Canada’s favourite pastimes.

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More important than that, however, we can connect with one other, whether it is with our immediate families and friends or acquaintances we just met.

I am always a little amused when I head down lake in the boat and folks in other vessels smile and wave to me. I always wonder if they’re the same people who cut me off on the highway in fits of road rage.

Fishing does that to you. It brings out the best in people, which is why I always think that Canada should be the perennial host of the G8 and G10 World Summits, when the leaders from the most powerful countries gather to plot strategies.

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Imagine if they huddled together in a lodge on a lake in the Northwest Territories. Or maybe at a salmon resort in Haida Gwaii, or a seaside community in P.E.I. at the height of the Bluefin tuna migration.

Gotta’ think, too, that if you sat Trudeau, Obama, Putin, Cameron, Abe, Merkel, Hollande and Mattarella around a shorelunch fire on a spruce- and pine-studded lake in Northern Ontario, where they could feast on a shorelunch of fresh walleye, northern pike, black crappies or lake trout that they just had caught, they’d not only learn how to get along with each other a little bit better but, they might come up with some positive platforms.

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Did you know that eating fish is not only nutritious and delicious, it is also good for your brain? It is a proven fact.

I have to bet, too, that the leaders would quickly come to realize the enormous social and economic benefits that fishing offers in terms of creating a new generation of conservationists and stewards of the land. They might even start caring more about the natural resources that generate so much money for our national economies.

Did you know, for example, that just in Canada alone, sport fishing is an industry worth more than $8 billion a year. And as any hard-core angler will tell you, it probably saves that much or more again in health care costs.

That’s why National Fishing Week, which encourages Canadians to get outdoors and enjoy our angling heritage, is so vitally important. Imagine if every kid in the country cut the electronic umbilical cord they seem to be tethered to these days, parked the electronic devices for a day or two and grabbed a fishing rod instead.

It would be a brave new world, indeed.

To learn more about Catch Fishing and National Fishing Week click CLICK HERE. 

And if you’d like to win a brand new Rapala fishing rod and reel that I am going to be giving away in celebration of National Fishing Week, click here ROD AND REEL GIVEAWAY and tell me what is your favourite fish species.

Oh, yes, and also let me know if you’d like to win the adult or the youth model rod/reel.

Good luck and good fishing!