Epic Fishing Camp

August 27 – Sept 1, 2023 Overnight Youth Camp on the South Sound Piers, Rivers & Beaches for ages 11-17 with prerequisite

Join us during the most exciting week of the year for fishermen and fisherwomen! Salmon season revs up in the rivers, crabs are still legal to catch and are growing in size; piers are hot with bottomfish and other exciting creatures caught day and night. Target fish include trout, salmon, steelhead, bass, surf perch, flounder, sole, dogfish shark, lingcod, and crab.

Regardless of whether you are an experienced angler or new to fishing, come join us for an exciting week of fishing at the very best spots in Western Washington! Learn the basics of rod/reel with our seasoned instructors and try your luck at various sites. We will fish the Puyallup River watershed, foothill lakes, Salish Sea piers, and Pacific Coast beaches!

You will learn what it means to be an honorable harvester, learning to avoid polluting the waters, reducing pain on fish, utilizing everything we can legally catch, and then cleaning and cooking your fish with Master Fisherman, Lead Instructor & International Culinary Chef Charlie Borrowman to enjoy eating the fruits of your labor. This camp is always an exciting and educational experience!

Camp Goals & Skills Covered:

The goal of this camp session is to help you become a proficient fisher and to introduce you to some traditional fishing techniques. Skills include:

Become adept at rod and reel fishing (casting, tackle/set up, troubleshooting, hooking/landing fish, bait/lures);
Begin to learn fly fishing;
Get comfortable fishing from river banks, lake shores, and ocean piers;
Learn how to efficiently find and fish the best locations;
Understand the ethics of harvesting animals;
Wild Camping and Swimming;
Fishing with Traditional Technologies;
Use of Fishing Knives, training in skills and safety for everyone.

Epic Fishing Camp Sample Itinerary

Camp Ages & Prerequisite:

This camp is designed for ages 11-17 who have attended at least one of our day or overnight camps, or a series of our family workshops.

Camp Leaders

Camp Directors Kim & Chris Chisholm are on site all week teaching and directing professionally-trained staff instructors at our hallmark 6-1 average student-teacher ratio that’s critical for safe and profound outdoor experiences. Read our FAQ’s for more details and check out camp testimonials dating all the way back to 1997.

Health Protocols

Hygiene protocols will remain the same as last year as long as there is still no evidence of Covid transmission in the outdoors with plenty of room to spread out. To start each day, campers must pass our health screening before being allowed to participate in camp, and we still require all campers to carry masks in backpacks and wear them in vehicles. If there are reports of group participants who came in contact with an infection, we require participants of that group to wear masks when lined up or seated less than 3-6 feet from others. As before the pandemic, we will continue requiring hand sanitizing whenever sharing tools and materials, before entering toilets, and we supervise proper hand washing after campers exit toilet facilities – doors left open between uses to ensure ventilation.

Full vaccinations are strongly encouraged – we follow the scientific consensus – with tetanus shot (usually given as part of the normal Tdap vaccine series) required since it’s considered the most unmitigated risk for outdoor education. Otherwise, we know that due to our 100% outdoor setting, combined with health screenings, contact tracing, supervised hand washing, bathroom ventilation, mask use when exposure has been reported in a group (and always in vehicles or other confined spaces) and individual/family style tenting at overnight camps, the risk of disease transmission has been negligible at Wolf Camp, so other vaccination records are not required.

Please click here for full details on our health and safety protocols during the pandemic era, see the latest CDC summer camp guidelines, and the state’s pandemic era guidelines for day camps (2021-22 pdf will be updated if/when 2023 guidance is issued).

Tuition

Tuition for this camp week is $1,975 including all gear and food, although participants will need to get a fishing license in advance (free under 15 years old) are encouraged to bring their own fishing pole and tackle, pillow and sleeping bag, pads and a tent if they have them already, but again, we have everything needed. We accommodate almost all food restrictions (our staff has many) but you may want to send along food for campers who are picky. Click here to apply for financial aid if needed from the Max Davis Scholarship fund administered by the Conservation College.

Registration

Please check to see if your school year begins before Labor Day, then when ready to register, reserve space by sending $500 deposit via Zelle to “kim@wolfcollege.com” with a note on camper name, camp dates and theme, or call us anytime at 425-248-0253 ex 1 or ex 2 to register over the phone with a credit card.

Deposits are non-refundable unless we refuse your registration (but if you cancel, we save all deposits as a credit for you to use in future years, or we can move the funds into our scholarship account if you prefer) so the best practice is to make the minimum deposit to register, and wait to pay the remaining balance during your camp week via Zelle (free from your online banking account) to “kim@wolfcollege.com” to save us time and transaction fees, or use PayPal to the same email address, or give us a check or have us run a credit card on site during your camp week.

Or email us to be put on our list for this program in the future. We always keep your information absolutely private, and will never share it.

Refund Policy: Payments are not refundable unless we don’t accept your application. If you cancel for any reason, you may receive a full credit good through the following calendar year on appropriate and available programs listed on our schedule, although an additional deposit may be needed to secure your spot in the future program. If a program you sign up for is canceled and not rescheduled at a time you can attend, you may receive a full refund except in cases of natural (weather, geologic, wildfire, etc) disasters, grid failures, epidemics, government shutdowns, conflicts or curfews, or other unforeseen emergencies making it unsafe for staff and/or attendees to reach or use program locations, in which case all payments made will be held by us without expiration date for your future use in appropriate/available programs of your choice. Reasons include the expenditure of funds (property rentals, advertising, materials, admin staff time, etc.) long before programs take place, i.e. deposits make it feasible for Wolf Camp to schedule programs in the first place, but our mutually understood agreement is that Wolf Camp will run the program at the safest available time in the future. Finally, no refund, nor credit, is given if a participant is a no-show without prior notice, or asked to leave a program for inappropriateness as determined by our kids, youth and adult agreements for participation.