Ladies, Let’s Go Fishing, a national organization for women who love boating and catching food of the finned kind, gives new meaning to the old adage, “there are plenty of fish in the sea.”

For them, reeling in a catch is about hooking bait, casting line and spending hours on the water with other women.

“I absolutely love it,” said Margi Plaxton, a Canadian snowbird who lives part time in Punta Gorda. “Men have been getting together to go fishing since forever. But have you ever tried to get five girlfriends together to go fish?”

Founded by Betty Bauman of Fort Lauderdale in 1997, the organization answered a similar quandary that year posed by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC): How could they get more women involved in fishing and environmental conservation efforts?

First, teach women to fish.

In mid April, Plaxton joined about 30 other women in Dania Beach for the second of five 2015 Ladies, Let’s Go Fishing University weekends.

The first fishing school weekend was held in Fort Myers in March. The next three will be staged in Stuart (May 29-30); Bimini, Bahamas (Sept. 11-13), and Tavernier (Nov. 13-15.) Learning weekends are filled with training workshops, informational seminars, one-on-one equipment lessons and a fishing jaunt.

Launched with support from the FWC through the national Sport Fish Restoration Program, Bauman’s initiative has so far graduated nearly 9,000 women from the now 19 year-old-ladies only fishing program. She credits her husband and not-so-forgiving first fishing partner Chuck Baldwin for inspiring the organization’s nickname, “The No Yelling School of Fishing.”

“But if I didn’t have Chuck or the 40 volunteers in different cities, I’d be the founder/flounder,” Bauman joked.

The recent Dania Beach weekend featured lectures by prominent local fishing experts and boat captains Lee Lavery who taught fishing basics, Mike Genoun who focused on offshore fishing, and Brian Leibowitz who offered detailed insight on inshore fishing.

Hands on classes included dehooking, spin casting, net casting, releasing, knot typing and ballyhoo rigging.

Genoun, founder and editor of Florida Sport Fishing magazine and host of FOX channel’s “Florida Sport Fishing,” also led the recent weekend’s “Knots: Line to Leader” seminar and a gaffing session using grapefruits as fish heads.

“Don’t let anyone tell you that fishing is about strength or that someone of my size can catch a bigger fish than you,” Genoun told the ladies. “Fishing is about technique, knowing the fundamentals and using equipment and tackle to its limits . . . Women can fish like any man on planet Earth.”

Genoun cited sport fishing’s short rod icon Marcia Bierman as an example. Bierman, who stands a little over 5 feet tall and weighs barely 105 pounds, boasts an impressive list of record-breaking fetes including becoming the first woman to win the Bahamas Billfish Championship.

“I’ve seen men who can’t handle a 100 pound tuna. It’s brain, not brawn that matters,” Genoun said.

Even girly girls can learn to be tops in the sport — just ask Lavery who can bait hook a bloody ballyhoo in seconds flat without breaking a nail on her perfectly manicured hands.

Lavery, president of the 55-member Ladies, Let’s Go Fishing South Florida chapter, said being able to participate equally in a male dominated sport is what keeps many women coming back.

“When they sow, they reap. They get out there, get their hands dirty, cast a net, tie a knot, fish for food. For some of them it’s the coolest thing in the world,” Lavery said.

She does it to eat, teach and live. Owner of two fishing boats, Lavery is a self described “meat fisher” who eats what bites. Exposing other women to the sport satisfies her life long dream to be a teacher.

“There is no life beyond fishing. I am obsessed with it,” she said.

All weekends cap off with a day of ocean fishing, or not, lady’s choice. This year, for the first time, “the girls” are allowed to bring a male companion.

“There is a ‘no yelling’ rule, but if a lady wants to bring her guy then it just means they will both be able to learn and help each other out,” Bauman said.

On April 18, after four hours off Fort Lauderdale on the party boat Catch My Drift and sport vessels Big Game and New Lattitude, the group weighed in 70 pounds of bonita, blackfin tuna, king mackerel, toro snapper and blue runner.

Though the take was not plentiful, the adventure was priceless, said first timer Lucia Capolino, of Lighthouse Point, who snagged a 5-pound snapper while fishing shoulder to shoulder on the party boat with her daughter Nicole Blankfield.

Capolino could have motored her own boat out on the ocean or cast her own rod off the dock of her waterfront home.

“But I wanted to take the course, spend time with my daughter, share tips with new friends. Not to mention that it’s fun to catch fish and even better to eat what you catch. I wanted to do it all,” Capolino said.

Other outings this year have been more fruitful, said Mary Metcalf, of Punta Gorda, one of Bauman’s first students and now one of Bauman’s right hand staffers.

On a late March ladies excursion in Chokoloskee Island Park on Florida’s southern Gulf Coast, Metcalf reeled in several large trout — just in time to serve up for Easter dinner. Her most memorable catch came on a 2006 fishing jaunt in Costa Rica when she broke her personal record with a 450 pound marlin that took 53 minutes to reel in.

The group’s other adventure locations have included Alaska, Africa, US Virgin Islands, Denver, Colorado; St. Augustine and St. Petersburg.

But Metcalf’s favorite place to fish with fishing girlfriends is the Florida Keys, the fishing capital of the world. “We catch the most, the biggest and the largest variety of fish in the Keys — always,” Metcalf said. “But the best thing about this group is making new friends. And getting to travel. And then, catching fish.”