Country music star Blake Shelton recently taught a group of foster children from his home state of Oklahoma about the fun of fishing and the delicious rewards of a pond-to-table fish fry.
Videos by Wide Open Country
Kids were provided with rods, reels and tackle they could keep, and they got the opportunity to fish on Shelton's property in Tishomingo, Okla.
"Our second event featured a familiar face: Blake Shelton, who's an Oklahoma Wildlife Conservation Foundation board director," reads a Sept. 23 Facebook post by the Oklahoma Wildlife Conservation Foundation. "Blake invited several foster children to come fish one of his Oklahoma farm ponds. He and some other wonderful volunteers with ODWC (Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation), OKDHS (Oklahoma Department of Human Services and OWCF helped teach the kiddos how to fish (and as you see in the pictures, they caught some nice bass). But the lesson went further than fishing, the children also learned how to fillet their catches, then they had a fish fry — from pond to table! Talk about a day these kids (and adults) will never forget!!
"Thank you, Blake for being so generous and taking time to invest in the children from your home state by showing them what outdoor Oklahoma is all about."
The event was part of the Fostering Outdoor Oklahoma Families partnership program.
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The foster kids' fishing trip happened sometime before Shelton got occupied with filming season 19 of NBC's The Voice, which returns on Oct. 19.
Shelton's spent downtime created by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in Oklahoma with his girlfriend and duet partner, Gwen Stefani. Together, they've mastered at least one new skill.
"This summer during quarantine, I learned how to make jam," he said during a recent first look at the upcoming season of The Voice. "I have about six or eight peach trees, and every year they make a bunch of peaches and we eat them. But this year, since we were there and there were so many and there was nothing else to do, we got online and we learned how to make jam. We've made, like, cases of peach jam. That's a lot of work! Probably will never do that again but I know how to do it."
