Not every fishing trip needs to be an expedition. The Fort Kearny SRA lakes are the I-80 angler’s rest stop: seven clear sandpit lakes ten minutes off the interstate at Kearney, with shoreline access everywhere, fishing piers on lakes 5, 6, and 7, and a tackle loaner program if you didn’t pack gear.
The fishing is honest small-water stuff — largemouth bass, bluegill, channel cats, crappie — and Lake 6 gets seasonal rainbow trout plants (over a thousand 12-inchers each fall), which makes it one of the easiest places in central Nebraska to put a kid on a trout. Note that Lake 2 is catch-and-release for all catfish species.
In March, the real show isn’t in the lakes at all: it’s overhead, when the world’s largest concentration of sandhill cranes funnels through the Platte River valley less than a mile away. Fish the morning, watch cranes at sunset — that’s a perfect Kearney day.