A Reel Future: Taking Foster Kids Fishing in Clearwater, Florida

For a lot of children in the foster system, a weekend story to share with classmates on Monday morning is not a given. That small, ordinary thing—having something to talk about, something that sounds like a normal childhood—is part of what Misty set out to provide when she founded A Real Future ten years ago in Clearwater, Florida.

The program is built around a simple premise: take foster kids out on the water for a day of fishing. But what Misty found early on was that the kids who showed up weren't always arriving with excitement. Many came carrying real weight—sadness, instability, circumstances that no child should have to navigate. The boat didn't erase any of that. What it did was interrupt it.

A dolphin spotted on the way out. A rod in hand. A fish on the line. Misty describes watching the shift happen in real time—a reluctant smile working its way onto a child's face, and then, once the fishing starts, a kind of full presence that's hard to manufacture any other way. "They forget about what's happening back on land," she says. "They are just in the moment."

The program runs trips through spring break and ramps up through the summer, with Misty's own adult children serving as some of its earliest and most reliable volunteers—what she calls being "volun-told." When a boat carries a dozen kids, she needs the help. On the water, something else tends to happen too: once a child catches a few fish, they'll often walk over to help another kid who hasn't yet, sharing the experience without being asked.

Misty is clear-eyed about what a single fishing trip can and cannot do. It may not be life-changing, she acknowledges. But it gives children who have often been given away or taken from their homes a chance to do something that kids with stable families do—and to go back to school with a story that's theirs. "That really gives them a lot of self-confidence," she says.

A Real Future accepts donations of money, volunteer time, and fishing equipment—rods and reels that kids can take home after a trip, so the experience doesn't have to end at the dock.