WELLSVILLE – On Friday, May 2, 81 sixth graders from Lincoln Elementary School in Hyrum showed up at Wellsville Reservoir to turn loose their science projects. After the release of the trout, which they have been watching grow from eggs, the students grabbed poles, bobbers and worms and surrounded the north end of the reservoir trying to land a rainbow trout.
Wellsville Reservoir is a community fishing pond, anglers have a daily limit of two fish and are encouraged to voluntarily release all Largemouth Bass. Waters are open to fishing only when the community parks are open to the public.
A file photo of student anglers on Wellsville Reservoir fishing.
Some kids brought their own fishing poles and some borrowed fishing poles that were available from Cache Anglers and others.
Kanon Brown landed what looked like a 13-inch rainbow right off the bat with the help of parent volunteer Cory Livers. Brown let everyone who passed by he caught a rainbow trout.
Cache Anglers is a Trout Unlimited Chapter, and they are the ones that installed the specialized temperature-controlled aquariums to help the eggs hatch and keep the fingerlings alive until they are released.
Terry Adams of Logan is the Trout in the Classroom Coordinator and said they have been told raising trout eggs in aquariums doesn’t work real well.
“We’ve had pretty good luck with our setup over the years,” he said. “We capped it at 17 aquariums in schools around Cache Valley this year. Each setup costs about $3,000.”
The local fisherman’s club has a fundraiser every year to finance and supply the special set ups to raise fish in the different classrooms.
A file photo of trout eggs before they are put into a specialized aquarium used to hatch and raise them.
“The problem we have is not the funding as much as the need for volunteers to help,” he said. “We need more volunteers.”
The trout eggs come from one of 13 fish hatcheries Utah Division of Wildlife Resources uses to raise game fish.
This year, the trout eggs were dropped off in Mrs. Camilla Frenzel’s 6th grade class where the specialized aquarium was set up to accept the eggs.
“I teach science, and this works well for teaching,” she said. “All of the sixth-grade classes come through and check the progress periodically.”
From now until the end of school classes that are raising fish in their classrooms will be scheduling fieldtrips to Wellsville to release their fish and spend a couple of hours fishing and then eat lunch.
Trout in the Classroom gives Trout Unlimited members and other volunteers a chance to get involved with their local schools, while teaching kids about water quality, aquatic life, and other environmental issues.
A student holds a plastic cup with a fingerling rainbow trout before it is released in to the Wellsville Reservoir on Friday May 2, 2025.
Each class with an aquarium has a volunteer who helps make raising the trout successful. This year each school was given some 200 trout eggs. Some die along the way. At the end of the term they had about 150 to release.
Trout in the Classroom has been around for over 30 years. It began in Canada with salmon but gradually came to the states and spread across the country. Today the organization claims over 5,000 schools have implemented a version of Trout in the Classroom in their curriculum.