Daffodil the Trout [Archive]

happybrew

04-15-2001, 05:05 PM

I've been very busy with Easter week, so I wasn't able to post this earlier. St. Louis ponds is still a great place to take kids. They have put in sidewalks around one of the ponds, and stocked it with trout. I went checked it out after work a week and a half ago, and they had just stocked it. There was a school of about 200 trout still hanging around the spot they put them in at, with fish jumping all over the place, so I took my 4 year old daughter and my 4 year old niece there the next day. The swarm of trout had dissipated by then. We only caught one, but that was enough. They were tickled pink. We put it in a bucket of water while we continued to fish. That, of course, meant that no more fishing was to be done that day, because they had a new pet! They announced to me that they were naming it Daffodil. Daffodil the Trout. "I think it's hungry!" my neice said, as she proceeded to throw grass into the bucket. "Here's some grass for you to eat." My daughter started throwing Power bait in for it. "What a nice fishy!" The hard part came when it was time to go home. I asked if they wanted to take Daffodil home and eat him. Horror of horrors! "We can't do that! He's our pet!" So you want to let him go then? "Oh, no! We can't do that! He's our pet!" But we can't keep him because we don't have a fish tank. "There's one at the dentist's office!" The dillemnas I can get myself into without even trying! Finally, I explained to them that if we took Daffodil home, we were going to eat him. So are we going to let him go? "No, let's take him home." So we took Daffodil home. When my sister-in-law picked up my neice that afternoon, she was matter-of-factly informed that "Uncle Doug cut Daffodil's head off!" Now I'm in the dog house! And I just wanted to do something nice for the kids. Okay, I'm not really in the doghouse, but I could have been. Next time the fish are either getting whacked or released.

Anybody looking for a nice place to take kids for easy-catch stocked trout, St. Louis ponds is a good place to go.

happybrew

happybrew

04-15-2001, 05:29 PM

St. Louis Ponds is between Woodburn and Salem. It's a bit off the beaten path. If you go to Mapquest, or Mapblast, or one of the other on-line map services, and lood for driving directions to St. Louis, Oregon, you'll get there. St. Louis is little more than a crossroads. Or get directions to Gervais. St. Louis Road goes over I-5 from Gervais. Before you get to St. Louis there are railroad tracks. There's a sign pointing out the road to the ponds. The one with the outhouse and parking lot is the one they stock with trout. The others have warm-water gamefish.

happybrew