As spring fishing season has us all heading to our favorite fishing holes, consider two important points critical to the sport’s progression: 1) Host a kid, or any beginner, and you'll open the door to their personal angling development; 2) First-time lessons need a realistic starting point so hold the dock skipping and deep cranking stuff for down the road.

In many cases, catfish offer a user-friendly option with a good chance of catching something big enough to eat. From the smaller channel cats to the blue variety reaching hefty proportions, catfish are fairly indiscriminate eaters with respectable fights and tasty fillets. Other words, they're the ideal "beginner" fish.

During early summer, big bluegills, in full spawning hues, start their gradual migration toward the shallows. As water temperatures reach 70 degrees, their breeding nests begin to appear—­imagine elephant tracks on a lake bottom. Breeding often continues through August. These fish, the biggest bulls you’ll see all year, are aggressive biters and hard fighters. Perhaps best of all, their shallow-water haunts are easily accessible from a boat or from shore.

Minnesota’s Dave Genz, an icefishing master, calls these fish “no-nosers”—nothing but forehead. He focuses on them the instant that the ice melts, trading his jigging sticks for 12-foot spinning rods. But that’s pretty much all he changes. His terminal gear strategy remains a constant, and it’s a topnotch way to catch plate-sized fish.

The business world measures Return on Investment (ROI) by its impact on the bottom line. According to a new report titled "More Habitat Means More Fish," investment in the great outdoors is about much more than dollars and cents – notwithstanding the undeniably strong economic benefits.

Released May 7, the report compiled by Restore America's Estuaries (RAE) and the American Sportfishing Association (ASA) and co-authored with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) states that investing in U.S. coastlines and estuaries leads to healthy habitat and strong fisheries. Such investments, driven by the more than $1 billion that anglers contribute through state fishing license fees and taxes on fishing equipment, bear significant impact on the businesses and industries that rely on healthy fisheries.

It's no secret that castable umbrella rigs hold big-bass potential, but when Pflugerville, Texas angler Donnie O’Neal cast his YUM Flash Mob Jr. into Lake Austin on April 28, his rod loaded up with what he thought was the stud he was seeking for the Texas Sharelunker Program, which recognizes bass over 13 pounds.

Bad news: It wasn't a baker's dozen bass. Good news: The catch weighed 19.6 pounds. Cool news: It was a massive double-header that included a 7.8 and O'Neal's personal best bass that weighed 11.8. Both were released after O'Neal's big catch photos.