Have you ever been to the Paint Bank Fish Hatchery on Rt 311 in Craig County? Visitors to the hatchery can view and feed thousands of trout as they walk among the raceways. It’s wall to wall fish. If you were to throw a line in, as long as you had bait on the hook, you would likely catch something easily and quickly. Once those fish leave the hatchery though, it becomes significantly more challenging to hook them.

The VA Department of Wildlife Resources transports these trout to 10 different counties and stocks 27 different waters every year. Once the fish are out in a stream, your odds of catching one decrease significantly. Not only are numbers less concentrated but there are alternative food sources and other types of distractions vying for their attention. You might catch one but you might not.

Talk to someone with lots of fishing experience though and they’re strategic about it. They know the best times to fish, where the best fishing holes are, and what types of bait to use in order to bring home supper. We can learn from this when Outreaching to adult and non-traditional learners. High school students are similar to the fish in the hatchery–contained together and concentrated in number. Traditional methods work well there. Adult and non-traditional learners are swimming on their own and have other things that compete for their attention. If we’re going to “hook” them, we have to figure out a strategy that includes the best times to fish, the best places to fish, and we have to bait the hook with what is most attractive to them.

Check out these adult and non-traditional learner outreach resources: Creative Ways to Attain and Retain the Non-traditional Learner, Marketing to Adult Toolkit, Pre-enrollment Advising as a Marketing Tool. You might also want to take a look at NCReconnect a pilot project and outreach campaign designed to engage and enroll adult learners in North Carolina.