The most important idea of my 20 time fishing project is attempting to catch a 50 lb catfish, we want to show people how to set a goal and what they need to do to achieve that goal. We've done research on where to find bigger fish and what we should be looking for, we've even conducted field days to compare our online research to peoples answers in real life so we can compare those answers. Our second main idea or goal for this project is getting kids outside and active, too many kids are wasting the day away inside on their electronics. Hopefully our project will show kids another way to get out and enjoy nature. Michelle Obama said you need at least 60 minutes of activity a day to stay healthy and fit, fishing may not be a lot of exercise but it will get you outside and off your electronics. Our third important idea or goal is to show people how to set a goal and how they can go about achieving that goal by studying your topic and trying to best way to do it by researching it. We're also trying to show kids how to prepare for a goal of theirs by going out and trying or practicing whatever they're trying to accomplish, and asking other people that are doing the same thing or something similar to get help and see if you can learn even more for them.

Field Work

On Wednesday night, Garrett and I went fishing under the bridge to complete some field work and found a mentor in the process. He told us he fishes under the bridge almost every night and the best working bait at the moment was cut shad. Our mentor had just gotten done from soccer practice and special Olympics training, he actually graduated from Kennedy in 2004 and was a basketball and football manager during high school. He told us you could get a good amount of bait behind the Quaker oats factory. He also told us who people have been treating the ecosystem under the bridge, leaving their trash and left over bait and supplies laying around. This not only makes a mess but it also leaves behind certain unpleasant smells. Unfortunately we couldn't catch a fish Wednesday night but the experience and knowledge we gathered from this trip will be very important in future trips. Just to compare we asked our mentor what kind of tackle or gear he's been using under the bridge and it turned out he uses just about the exact same tackle we use. He even showed us where people have been getting the most bites lately. We asked him if he had been fishing anywhere else so far this year and if there were any places catfish might be more active. He told us he's taken a couple trips to the Cedar River in Palo so far this year and the fish have been really active up there already, but for him being under the bridge is his money spot. So far this year he's caught a couple kinds of catfish under the bridge like Flathead and blue catfish. Another place he recommended was North Liberty, he's also had a couple of successful trips on the River there, Garrett and I decided to try these locations out to see if our mentor was right.  I was surprised our mentor had been getting a lot of luck already because the weathers been pretty cold. Our next step for our project is getting more field experience and reports.

Blog 3/24

The goal of our 20 time project is to get kids out of their house and off their phones and show them something we really enjoy doing outside. We've gathered a lot of useful information from articles based on the criteria for our project, since the brainstorming of our project we have had to find a better solution for our camera situation, both of our generic go-pro's weren't up to the standard we have for this project, so we decided to put some money into our project and buy a better go pro. We have also bought a lot of fishing supplies in preparation of our project. Our goal is to show people how to do a 20 time project and show them what we enjoy doing for fun in our free time. We haven't really changed our views for this project, probably because we knew from the beginning what we wanted to do and what had to be done in order to execute our plans. We plan on starting the project once the water heats up a little more, so the weather has kind of gotten in the way of our project, but it's making us more excited to get started.

20 Time Project

For my 20 time proposal, I'll be working with my Friend Garrett Kubovec to teach the class how and where to fish in Cedar Rapids. A lot of the feedback we got was mostly negative, people didn't think we could actually make this into a project. We have come up with a lot of great ideas to help with our research such as the air and water temperatures and the current in the water. We'll be documenting our excursions on Garrett's gopro and boat. So far we have struggled to figure out who our mentor will be but we've have asked around for peoples input and it has helped with our search. We have done a really good job at finding ways to help teach the class when we present, we've thought of a lot of good information that will be very useful in their learning. We haven't asked other students if they think the information we want to put in will actually help, but I plan on doing it before we finalize our plans. Next week during 20 time I would like to show students in our class the plans we've come up with and get their feedback so we'll know if we're teaching them in the best possible way.