Below is a photo taken on April 15, 2000, the opening day of fishing season. This is at about 9 a.m. Where is everybody? Look carefully and you can pick out several fisherman, but there are not as many as expected. There are catch and release rules that allow fishing before the first day in this section of the Farmington River, so maybe that has taken the wind out of the sails of opening day here. This location is...well everybody must know where this is! (if not- that building on the left is the Pleasant Valley General Store)
Here's where the action is! Below is a photo of opening day at the Hitchcock Chair Factory in the Riverton section of Barkhamsted. Hitchcock awards a sturdy maple rocking chair to the person pulling in the largest trout. Watching the action from the vantage point of the bridge is a popular activity. Is it true that the State stocks some of the largest trout in and near this pool with this event in mind? The gentleman who revived the chair factory here in the 1940's was named John Kenney and he was an avid fly fisherman. He was fishing in this pool when he started thinking about the old abandoned factory sitting on the riverbank. The rest is history. Mr. Kenney started the tradition of the fishing derby you see below.
Below, another angle of the anglers at Riverton. The Department of Environmental Protection's (DEP) Division of Fisheries has stocked an estimated 476,000 trout in Connecticut streams and lakes this year, including the Farmington River here in Barkhamsted. These fish represent approximately 60 percent of the total number of trout to be released during the 2000 fishing season. The DEP stocking program began March 1st, and continues through Memorial Day, with major trout streams and larger lakes receiving the greatest numbers of fish. Larger lakes and rivers (such as the Farmington) are stocked regularly between mid April and Memorial Day. (The information on stocking is from the State DEP Bureau of Natural Resources web site: dep.state.ct.us/burnatr/index.htm )
