At 16, Michelle Fitch has seen her bass fishing career take off, but she has not forgotten where it all started.
Besides helping guide less-experienced anglers, sharing her expertise at expos or just fishing for fun, Michelle is also crusading to clean up the back-yard pond where she caught her first little bluegill. It is a crusade that landed the Lincoln-Way High School junior an appointment as the youngest member ever to serve on the Mokena Environmental Commission.
Even as a very small child, Michelle loved the pond, said her mother, Gail Fitch: “She’d be hanging on the fence, saying, `Fishies, fishies.’ “
Her father, Mike, a dedicated fisherman, was only too happy to share his favorite sport at the pond behind the family’s Midland Avenue home.
When an excited 5-year-old Michelle pulled her first fish out of the water, the pond was clear, 4 feet deep and full of fish.
“I learned how to fish in there,” she said. “Now it’s all stagnant. It’s about a foot deep.”
And the fish are long gone, giving way to algae and duckweed. Muskrats have eroded the shoreline, and silt and chemical runoff from other ponds have altered the water quality.
“I fished here my whole life, and I hate to see the whole thing go down into the dumps,” she said.
She outlined her concerns in what she called a “pretty emotional letter” to the Mokena Environmental Commission.
Impressed by the letter, commissioners invited Michelle to a meeting and ended up offering a spot on their board.
“They were looking for a newer, fresher kind of look at things,” she said.
The cleanup will not happen overnight, but Michelle is optimistic.
“Right now everything is up in the air, but we’re working on it,” she said. “We have to sit down and figure out what can we do about the draining problem and the weed problem.”
Perhaps the pond could be dug again and restocked with fish, she said. But other problems must be solved first, including “getting the draining system worked out, making sure it’s kept up well.
“That’s a big part of being a fisherman, taking care of the environment,” she said, but those concerns aren’t unique to her. “(Kids) really care about what happens. We’re going to be the ones that are going to be taking over.”
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Like environmental activism and scholastic success, fishing gives Michelle a sense of accomplishment.
“It’s the satisfaction that you get,” she said. “It was your skills and your talent that caught that fish, and a little bit of luck.”