Town Diary - April 2000
First day of fishing season.
Below is a photo taken on April 15, 2000,
the opening day of fishing season. This is at about 9 a.m. Where is
everybody? Look carefully and you can pick out several fisherman, but there
are not as many as expected. There are catch and release rules that allow
fishing before the first day in this section of the Farmington River, so maybe that
has taken the wind out of the sails of opening day here. This location is...well
everybody must know where this is! (if not- that building on the left is the
Pleasant Valley General Store)
Here's where the action is! Below is a photo of opening day at the
Hitchcock Chair Factory in the Riverton section of Barkhamsted. Hitchcock
awards a sturdy maple rocking chair to the person pulling in the largest trout.
Watching the action from the vantage point of the bridge is a popular activity.
Is it true that the State stocks some of the largest trout in and near this pool
with this event in mind? The gentleman who revived the chair factory here
in the 1940's was named John Kenney and he was an avid fly fisherman. He was
fishing in this pool when he started thinking about the old abandoned factory sitting
on the riverbank. The rest is history. Mr. Kenney started the tradition
of the fishing derby you see below.
Below, another angle of the anglers at Riverton. The Department of Environmental
Protection's (DEP) Division of Fisheries has stocked an estimated 476,000 trout
in Connecticut streams and lakes this year, including the Farmington River here
in Barkhamsted. These fish represent approximately 60 percent of the total
number of trout to be released during the 2000 fishing season. The DEP stocking
program began March 1st, and continues through Memorial Day, with major trout streams
and larger lakes receiving the greatest numbers of fish. Larger lakes and rivers
(such as the Farmington) are stocked regularly between mid April and Memorial Day.
(The information on stocking is from the State DEP Bureau of Natural
Resources web site: dep.state.ct.us/burnatr/index.htm )
Back to the
Town Diary front page.