TPWD put on an event in College Station where they stocked a city pool with around 1200 trout. For the next three days anyone could pay $3 and catch up to three trout. Most of the fishing times were designated for just kids under the age of 10, but there were also some limited time slots for the general public.
Sure, it seemed weird to catch fish out of a swimming pool, but for little kids it was neat to be able to see the fish chasing and reacting to your lure. It was also nice to know that the odds were good you were going to walk away with at least a fish. That aspect made fishing out of a pool fun.
It was also neat to catch trout again. I had forgotten how visual trout are. They really track lures that are moving, and even then, they swim up to it and look over it for a split second before they decide if it looks safe to bite. I also overestimated the size of the trout. These were tiny little fish, akin to some of the small ones I caught years ago out of small creek in Colorado. Anyway, I did show up with the smallest treble hooks I have, which are small enough, but even still the trout were having a hard time swallowing it. Luckily a friend of ours who was also there let us borrow a tiny little single hook plastic lure. That worked well and we ended up catching all of our trout on it.
W. really had a great time. He may not have hooked the fish, but he did reel them in and put them on ice. He was a little sad that we “took them from their families” but I think he is still very excited at the prospect of eating his catch tonight for dinner. Ironically we’ll also be making burgers since the trout fillets probably have about 2 ounces of meat on them each. I did get some practice deboning a trout fillet. I got most of the bones out but I’ll take a bass or catfish any day over trout.
