Newtown Residents Release Baby Trout Into Bethel Pond

What will life be like for a baby trout being released into the wild? That was the question Newtown students were compelled to answer as they released tiny trout into Bennett Park Pond in Bethel recently.

More than 100 sixth graders from Reed Intermediate School divided  into teams and released about 20 fingerling trout, each about 3-inches long, into the pond one recent day. This water body is part of a stream feeding Pond Brook that flows into Lake Lillinonah off Hanover Road, in Newtown.

The students, led by Richard Neeb, one of four sixth grade teachers involved in the exercise, were instructed to take water samples of the pond to check for tiny invertebrates before releasing the trout. They wrote reports on their findings, including water temperature, nitrite levels and pH.

Students reported seeing crayfish, worms, bugs that will turn into flies, snails, midges and sundry other small creatures in the pond that proved it would support aquatic life and provide a healthy environment for the trout.

Once they released the trout, the students watched the tiny fish assimilate in their new home and wrote down their observations. Some of the trout hung around the release points and others hid under rocks while some let the current in the pond carry them away.

To complete the project, the students were told to write stories, imagining they were trout themselves and what life would be like in the pond and times to come upstream in Pond Brook or Lake Lillinonah. The exercise, teachers said, was designed to invite the students to understand the natural environment and why it should be protected.  

The trout project, now in its third year at Reed, involves the school's entire sixth grade, about 470 students. The students were divided into four groups, with two groups visiting the pond next week and the remaining two next week.

Jerry Rekart, coordinator of trout in the classroom for Candlewood Valley Trout Unlimited, said his organization donated trout eggs for hatching to 19 schools in Fairfield and Litchfield counties.

The students watch the eggs hatch and then release the hatchlings when they are large enough into the wild to gain an appreciation for natural environments, clean water and other conservation objectives, Rekart said.

"The trout released today will likely swim in the current down into Pond Brook and end up in Lake Lillinonah," he said.

Students from Danbury High School will engage in a similar exercise and environmental study at a section of Pond Brook on Route 25 in Newtown's Hawleyville section May 17, Rekart said.

Neeb said the project at Reed began with 239 eggs donated by Trout Unlimited from which 84 trout fingerlings survived for release. The eggs were hatched and the tiny fish maintained in the school's five aquariums, he said.

If the eggs had been released naturally in the wild, only about 10 percent of them would have produced fish, the teacher said, regarding the relative success of hatching and raising them in a controlled environment at the school.