If you do it right, spring trout fishing leaves your hands tingling.
Freezing fingers means you've been casting and catching, reaching into icy cold water to seize your reward: a glistening, vibrant trout, just like the ones in Field and Stream.
For 90 kids from Baltimore's recreation centers, Saturday's overcast skies and the frigid waters of Dead Run in Leakin Park weren't obstacles to overcome but part of a day they'll remember for a long time.
In the parking lot, volunteer guides from Maryland Trout Unlimited poured coffee for themselves while distributing free rods and reels to the kids. After a quick welcome and nature lesson from MDTU's Jim Gracie, who also chairs the state's Sport Fish Advisory Commission, everyone scattered in search of nearly 1,000 rainbow trout stocked the night before.
Sounds easy, right? Fish go in the water at certain spots, fish come out 24 hours later. Ah, if only things worked like that. Instead the guides and beginning anglers participated a familiar rite of spring—figuring out where the fish are hiding and what will coax them to bite. Log? Deep pool? Bridge underpass? Worms? Corn? Pieces of feather and flash? Marshmallows?
Yes, Cynthia Conaway, a teacher at Hilton Elementary School, and her daughter, Sarah, 5, were trying marshmallows until, "Sarah ate the bait," mom reported. Luckily they brought worms, too, which Sarah seemed less likely to snack on.
City Catch, as it is called, began in the 1980s under the Schaefer administration, when Baltimore had 125 recreation centers. Two kids were selected from each site based on a conservation-related contest. The inaugural event made Good Morning America, when William Donald Schaefer himself threw out the first fish in Herring Run, bordering Morgan State University.
The program languished under the next administration but found new life afterMartin O'Malley took over. Sadly, the number of recreation centers—critical for recruiting kids—is fewer than half of what it once was.
“It’s the easiest thing we raise money for,” says Gracie, who grew up in nearby Edmondson Village and fished Dead Run and Gwynns Falls as a kid.
Tony Tochterman, a long-time advocate of teaching youngsters to fish, supplied at cost the rods and reels that the kids got to take home. Steve Munsey, owner Stubby Steve's, a Virginia-based artificial lure maker, supplied the bait. The Baltimore Recreation and Parks Department cooked up a hot dog lunch.
The strategy of giving each kid his or her own gear is simple, Gracie said. "They won't come back if they don't have any way to catch fish."
Some kids rejected bank fishing in favor of plunging right into the stream.
"My shoe is oozing water, not a good sign," said Tracy VonHendricks, 13, before ignoring the omen for another close encounter with Dead Run.
Just below the Winans Meadow pedestrian bridge, early success gave way to a lull experienced anglers expect but kids don't understand.
Tom Gamper of TU lost his go-to lure, a Copper John, and the switch to other artificials didn't pan out. With 30 minutes to go before lunch, Gamper tied on an olive wooly bugger and let fly to a deep pool on the opposite bank. Like magic, the fish responded. So did the four boys from the Robert C. Marshall Center, who each reeled in a rainbow.
“It was big and it was hard pulling it out. It was a fighter,” said an excited Troy Fennell, 12, who couldn’t take his eyes off his 10-inch catch. “I’m going to have someone cook it up for me.”
Gamper grinned. "This is what it's all about," he said. "The sound of laughter and trout splashing in the water."
And there was one more happy sound, the one fishing advocates love to hear: "I'm coming back here tomorrow," said Khalil Blalock, 12.
Photos: Tracy Von Hendricks, 13, gets a casting lesson from Matt McGlone (1). Trayshod Durant, 14, with a rainbow trout (2). Troy Fennell, 12, with a rainbow trout (3). Sarah Conaway, 5, experiences her first worm (4).