CONNOQUENESSING TWP — In many ways, Gretchen Stough is a typical 7-year-old girl.

In other ways, she is decidedly atypical.

She plays with dolls. She has an Easy-Bake oven. She likes to swim and she has horse wallpaper in her bedroom.

But she also plays with toads and turtles. She knows more about bait and tackle than most fishing enthusiasts five times her age.

"She goes right from toads and fish to Barbie dolls," said her father, David Stough.

Gretchen started fishing this spring and has shown an early gift for reeling in her finned friends.

Her mother, Julie, thinks her fascination with fish came from the movie "Finding Nemo," but Gretchen says, "Nah."

"My dad really got me into it," Gretchen says, her voice loud and crisp, her eloquence belying her youth. "I just had the desire to do it."

Recently Gretchen caught a 17-inch and a 14½-inch bass at Moraine State Park. She caught three in all, but had to throw one back because it was too small.

"I didn't think I was going to catch anything," Gretchen said. "Then I caught one, then the second one I caught — it was a battle. It was battling all over the place. The third one was the biggest battle of all. My dad helped me with that one."

So where are the two bass she kept now?

"We ate them," Gretchen said. "They were good, too."

Gretchen has caught other fish in her short career.

She nearly nabbed a bigger fish, but couldn't reel it in. She has also mastered the art of the fish story — musing on the fish that got away.

"I went fishing for catfish before," Gretchen said. "There was this big one that was as big as myself, and I'm 4-foot."

Sometimes, Gretchen keeps the fish she snags as pets.

She had a blue gill named Nibbles as a pet and also had a catfish briefly, but it met an untimely end.

"My dad had to flush it down the toilet," Gretchen said. "It kept him up all night."

Catfish can be loud fish. David found that out the hard way.

"It made too much noise hitting the sides of the tank," David said, laughing.

Gretchen, who is a second-grader at Homeacre Christian Academy in Butler, can teach a course on bait.

She explains how she catches crickets and worms to lure her fish.

"You have to have the right kind of bait," Gretchen said. "It's really a challenge."

Her father marvels at her abilities at such a young age.

While he helps her reel in some of her bigger catches from time to time, the rest is up to her.

"She's very intelligent," David said. "She's very skillful for a girl who is 7 years old. Some of the bigger fish she's caught had bent her pole completely in half.

"She catches bigger fish than her dad."

Gretchen doesn't plan on putting her pole away anytime soon.

She said it gives her a chance to spend time with her dad, but that's not the real reason she fishes.

"Well, I can spend time with him, but that's not the reason why I go," she said. "I go out there, really, to catch fish. I enjoy spending time with my dad as well.

"Yeah, I like it enough," she added. "It's just a real hobby for me now."