Bye Bye Trout

Mrs. Clark, Allison's third grade teacher, must love fish! When we went to supply night last August, I saw her classroom for the first time. There was a huge empty fish aquarium against one wall. Mrs. Clark said their class would be raising 200 salmon to release into a river. The salmon came last October and the entire third grade had a field trip to release the salmon in December. Well, Mrs. Clark wasn't finished. In January she filled the aquarium with 200 trout eggs. The class raised them and were ready to release them a few weeks ago. This time there was no field trip. Mrs. Clark invited all her students to come to Bethany Lake to help with the release. It was a Saturday. Earl was working all day and I didn't have any plans with the kids, so we went. It was very windy, but the kids had fun. Each kid got a cup, scooped trout out of Mrs. Clark's cooler and then submerged the cup in the lake so the trout could swim out. They did this several times until all the trout were out of Mrs. Clark's cooler and in the lake. My biggest concern was keeping Ethan and Tyson from falling in the lake. Luckily, I was successful keeping them dry! Ethan was probably the most excited about this process. I told him he would get to do this again in third grade.