Down To The Pond Fishin’ Kids Easily Catch Their Limit At Spruced-Up Fishing Hole

It’s still June, but this is one of those dog-days-of-summer stories.

If a horde of locusts is not ravaging the wheat in this Palouse farm town, the story as likely as not can deal with the local fishing hole.

First, the hard news: Some 2,000 rainbow trout are fast disappearing from the local juvenile fishing pond here, and with school just out, a state official said that is to be expected.

“Kids can be ardent anglers,” said Madonna Luers, an information officer for the Department of Fish and Wildlife. “They have three months off.”

There are a dozen fishing ponds in Eastern Washington reserved for children under 15 years old, calling to mind notions of Huck Finn. Or at least Huck Finn with a bike or parents willing to throw the rods in the back of an El Camino and motor the few miles out of town to wet some white corn on a hook.

The Garfield pond seems to go back more than 30 years when a few farmers broke out the equipment to muscle together an earthen berm that backed up a small spring near Silver Creek, forming a small pool in the rough shape of an A.

A floating carpet of algae overtook the pond until a few years ago, when local firefighters skimmed it off, covered the spring well with a concrete tablet to keep kids from falling in and generally spruced the place up.

Now the pond is used by Boy Scouts, middle-schoolers out camping, and groups of friends just out to kill time.

The name of the pond is unclear, fading from memory like the paint on the sign along the road to the nearby ghost town of Elberton. Most people just call it “The Pond,” said Texas Neal of Garfield. As in “goin’ down to the pond fishin,”’ she said.

Which is just what Neal’s daughter, Kathy, did on a recent evening with her husband, Randy Pinter, two boys and a dog.

The boys, Todd and Toby, are 4 and 11. The dog, Hershey, is a chocolate-colored cross of cocker and springer spaniels.

A passing shower bathed the pond in the sound of low, soft radio static as the family pulled up. A canopy of spruce and pine cloaked the area in campground smells. A beaver made its way from the center of the pond to the shore and took to preening itself, unconcerned with the newly arrived commotion.

The Pinter family regularly journeys out here after Randy Pinter gets off from the local fertilizer plant, but in this case they actually planned an outing for the sake of a photographer and reporter.

For the sake of full disclosure, when Pinter was asked if they would ordinarily fish in the rain, he said, “No.”

The boys used casting rods with plastic bobbers, lead sinkers that could break a small toe and hooks rigged with Green Giant white corn stored in a Rubbermaid container. If the fish don’t take to corn, the anglers had worms at the ready. They get them at Nanna and Poppa’s, Kathy’s Pinter’s parents, by squirting Dawn dishwashing detergent on the lawn and running a garden hose over it until the worms rose.

Todd, outfitted in Osh Kosh sneakers without socks and a corduroy Garfield-Palouse Vikings ball cap so big it shades his ears, was the first to see his red-and-white plastic bobber jiggle.

“I got a fish!” he announced.

“I think you got seaweed now,” said Pinter.

“Dad, come help me!” said Todd.

“And that’s a big one,” said Toby.

“That’s a dandy,” said Pinter as Todd beached a smallish trout wrapped in a ball of pond weed.

Pinter fetched the needlenose pliers to pull the hook. Todd gamely grabbed the fish, offering the following commentary: “Eayh.”

“Go get the bigit,” he told his dad, who produced a 5-gallon bucket with “Crop oil-m” fading on the label. He filled it with a few inches of pond water and dropped the fish in.

Todd was asked how big his fish was. “Eight pounds,” he said, pokerfaced.

The ritual was repeated with great speed, Todd and Toby alternating the catches. On one cast, Toby had a bite in seven seconds.

Todd slipped on the muddy bank, dirtying his hands and the seat of his pants. A great blue heron, its neck folded like the J-bend in a drain pipe, winged in from the far side of the pond but changed its mind. The rain abated.

Pinter repeatedly told Todd not to pull up on his line. Todd treated the refrain like so much background music. Finally, Pinter resorted to the parental carpet-bombing technique.

“Put your pole down,” he said.

“Put your pole down. Put your pole down.

“They listen just like kids, don’t they?”

Todd’s response: “I caught a big one!”

At another point Todd got a hit so strong his bobber disappeared as if it was being pulled under by a marlin.

He later pulled this prize - a 12-pounder, by his estimate - from the bucket and showed it to his mom.

“He’s talking,” he said as the fish jawed for air.

“He is talking,” Kathy Pinter calmly observed. “He’s saying, ‘Todd, put me in the bucket.”’

After about an hour, the bucket was a murk of eight or so wallowing fish.

It was time to go. The state limit is five fish per person, and it was getting late, and there are only so many fish a kid can catch in a summer.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Color Photos