Creating life-long anglers: impacts of a high school fishing program on youth fishing, related knowledge, confidence and perception of barriers

Youth fishing programs are an important gateway into continued fishing participation. With the current focus on R3 (recruitment, retention, and reactivation), it is important to understand the impacts fishing programs can have on their participants' knowledge, confidence, and interest in continuation. In this study, we conducted retrospective pre-post surveys of participants in a high school fishing program in Florida, USA, and compared results to a group of non-participating peers. We found significant increases in knowledge and confidence related to fishing skills among participants and significantly higher skills and confidence reported by participants as compared to non-participants. We also saw higher levels of self-identity as an angler as well as more desire to continue fishing on their own as compared to non-participants. The positive impacts of programs like this are important to the recruitment and retention of young anglers and continued evaluation of their effectiveness will lead to improved outreach programming.