A City Rodeo

Herring Run is a stream system that runs through the Northeast section of Baltimore City and eventually ends up as the head water to Back River. For all intent and purpose it is in my backyard.

With the exception of a couple of young adult years I have been a city resident all of my life. 

For a number of years Bob Walls with the Baltimore City Department of Parks and Recreation and local volunteers from Friends of Herring Run have organized and run an annual fishing rodeo on this stream in the spring. 

I will admit I was a little late to the party but I made a point of attending the last event that was held in March of 2018 (I’ll circle back why no 2019 event).

Anyway it’s fairly simple. Bob would arrange to procurer a few hundred trout, drop them in the stream on a Friday and set up shop with the kids on Saturday.  Was it fun? Hell yes.

It’s easy to enjoy the smiles on the faces of kids who, for the most part, are not exposed to this kind of activity on a regular basis, something that I find easy to take for granted. 

We fished with worms and a bobber for starters but to be honest those trout were less than interested the majority of the time. Then I spotted a small Mepps spinner in Bob’s tackle box. I made a few casts and worked the lure back a little herky jerky and those fish just swarmed up to it. The kids were loving it. We didn’t get a bite ever time but we manged more hook ups with the spinner than with the worms. I spent the rest of the day handing off the rod and helping these kids land their fish. Maybe the first for some.

Kids were allowed to keep their fish if they wanted to since these stocked trout didn’t stand much of a chance lasting long in this run. 

I went out on a limb and, without the Boards approval, took two rods and reels left over from a PVA event and awarded them to our two top anglers of the day.  Believe me the reward criteria was loose to say the least and I just got caught up in the moment.

There was no 2019 event due to the fact that a major construction project on the Harford Road Bridge closed off the usual stocking area in 2019. And to boot Bob Walls is now retired from his Baltimore City position. Believe me he was the engine that drove this event. 

Friends of Herring Run and members of Blue Water Baltimore would like to see this continue and I plan on staying connected and doing everything I can to make this happen. And it will.