At Gold Creek Trout Farm, even a toddler can catch your family's supper. The trout farm provides fishergirls and boys the simplest of fishing tools: a pole with a line and a hook, a net, a bucket and a cup of bait.
The "yuck" factor is minimal. The bait is a brown Play-Doh-like substance that you roll into a pea-sized ball and stick onto the hook. Then you drop your hook into one of the two cement-ringed ponds and hope that one of the 2,000 or more fish are tempted to take a bite.
If you can convince your child to keep the hook in the water and not jerk it around too wildly, it can take only 10 or 15 minutes to snag a rainbow trout. Even if it takes a bit longer, the spring-fed trout ponds are in a lovely setting under towering red cedars on a quiet hillside a few minutes outside of downtown Woodinville.
On a recent trip to the farms, one particularly unlucky mom and fishergirl duo kept getting their bait stolen and had to re-bait the line repeatedly, but it made their catch all the more exciting in the end. Once a trout is caught, you scoop it up in the net and transfer it to the bucket. The trickiest part is removing the hook with a special device, but Gold Creek owners Pamela or Cecil Thomas are on hand to help.
With all of the interest these days in eating local and helping kids to understand where their carrots and milk and apples come from, a trip to a trout pond provides a different avenue for making those farm-to-table connections. But it can raise awkward questions as well. My 2-year-old daughter was entertained by the spectacle of live fish swimming and flopping around, but a 4-year-old boy with our group was a little troubled by the fate of the fish in his bucket.
"Is the fish going to die?" Brendan asked. "Yes," his teacher said. But at least it's a quick death. Cecil Thomas quickly dispatches the trout, slits them open and cleans them out with minimal fanfare that seemed to trouble no one (except, of course, the fish.) Then the trout are bagged up and ready to take home.
The trout farm has a clean, covered picnic table area for snacks and there's a Port-a-Potty. And you're darn near a cluster of Washington wineries if you want to stop on your way home and grab a bottle to compliment your trout dinner.
IF YOU GO
Where: 15844 148th Ave. NE, Woodinville
When: March-May, open weekends from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.; June-August, open Wednesday-Sunday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.; September-November, open weekends from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.; closed December and open less frequently in January and February. Additional weekdays are available for schools or other large groups. To be safe, be sure to check the online calendar before you go.
Cost: Fish from the small-fish pond (10-14 inches) are $6-$7; fish from the large-fish pond (10-36 inches) are priced by size from $6-$36. A picnic table area can be reserved for $30 for large groups. Tours of the hatchery are also available for groups.
Contact: 425-483-1415; goldcreektroutfarm1@frontier.com; www.goldcreektroutfarm.com,
Lisa Stiffler is a freelance writer and mom.
