Armed with his Mickey Mouse fishing rod and a positive attitude, 3 1/2-year-old Nathan Cartier headed onto Pushaw Lake on Sunday hoping for the best.

Three hours later – still grinning – Cartier returned to Lakeside Landing with a fish … a fish tale … and an agenda.

Fish tales were not in short supply on Sunday, as the Bangor Bass Club held its first children’s tournament. Food was served after the fishing, and every participant left with a trophy, a certificate, and a full belly.

“Daddy, can I please put him back in the water?” Nathan asked, impatiently waving the small white perch he’d been carrying around for the previous five minutes.

“Not yet, bud,” Jason Cartier said, conveniently failing to explain that no matter how soon his son tossed the perch back into the water, there would be no reviving the dead fish.

“You’ve got to weigh the thing,” he said. “Don’t you want to see how much it weighs? That’s gotta be at least eight pounds.”

Seemingly satisfied with his father’s explanation, Nathan turned his attention back to the perch … and the fish’s eyes (which, the youngster had figured out, actually moved back and forth … if, of course, you’re willing to prod them with a finger or two).

“[Nathan hooked] an at least two-pound smallmouth,” Jason Cartier said, telling what may be the first of many “one that got away” stories for his young son. “We didn’t get it in the boat. As he was reeling it in, daddy got the net, picked up the line, and snapped the line. The fish swam away with his lure.”

According to Jason Cartier, Nathan didn’t dwell on the mishap for long.

“He looked at me and said, ‘Daddy, that’s OK,'” Jason Cartier said with a chuckle.

When the Bangor Bass Club joined the BASS Federation a few months back, members learned that there were two components that needed to be added to their busy slate of tournaments: youth and conservation programs are mandatory.

On Sunday, many club members brought their children to the lake the adults had fished competitively a day earlier for a low-key day of fishing.

Normally, the rules at bass tournaments are pretty strict. This time, the biggest rule was a simple one: Have fun.

“This is a very open description of how you can help [your young angler],” Chris Choiniere, the club’s youth coordinator, told the adults during the pretourney meeting. “You can assist your children. And I don’t need to know any more about that.”

That meant that on some boats, the adults sat and cheered. On others, adults and kids fished together. And on still others, kids decided to take lengthy breaks and the adults tried to hook a fish for them to reel in.

Choiniere was pleased with the turnout and the event.

“When planning this, I didn’t think I was going to be able to pull it off,” he said. “I was pleasantly surprised at the turnout. We had 16 youths today and a bunch of adults to [fish] with them.”

After the abbreviated tourney – three hours on the water was plenty for most of the younger anglers – the boats returned to shore for the weigh-in, awards ceremony, and a barbecue.

The biggest bass weighed nearly three pounds, while Nathan Cartier’s slender white perch weighed in at slightly more than four ounces.

But the day wasn’t about competition. All the trophies were the same, and no order of finish was recorded.

And no matter what the youngsters brought back to shore, each angler had learned enough about fishing to follow the unofficial golden rule of the sport: If you’re going to fish … it’s a lot more fun if you get to tell a story afterward.

“This here is a white perch,” Timmy Choiniere said, demonstrating that particular craft ably. “This here is what I caught.

“Even though my little brother beat me [by catching a much larger fish], I’m still happy, because this is what I got,” he said. “He’s small, but just as good.”

On a day when large and small anglers caught small and large fish (with everyone leaving the lake smiling), that pretty much summed it up.

John Holyoke can be reached at jholyoke@bangordailynews.net or by calling 990-8214 or 1-800-310-8600.