Fishing at the Ole Fishin' Hole

While visiting my parents in Washington, Grandma took us to her favorite spot, Bill's Fishin' Hole. It was a school day for the kids in Washington so we had the entire place to ourselves. It was a gorgeous day and the gentleman running the place gave us a personal guided tour that was very interesting. We learned a lot about trout and the fish hatching business. 

This was the view from the top of the property. There were about 6 fishing lanes with graduating size fish and then three ponds down at the bottom with small, medium, large fish. Beyond the tree line is the river. They use a natural Spring that comes out of the hillside and gravity to supply water to the ponds. This keeps the water at exactly the right temperature for the fish.

This is a fish hatching station where you can learn about the life cycle of a fish. They have tubes on the wall with different stages of the eggs and then they drop into this basin where there are hundreds of baby fish. You can reach in and hold them too.

Next he took us to a special tank where they had some extremely rare albino trout. They have to keep them covered so they don't get sunburned.

They had several peacocks on the property and the guy gave the kids some cookies to feed them. They were so pretty.

We walked around the whole place on our tour and while we did our guide gave the kids handfuls of fish food to feed all the fish along the way. He was giving us a great tour and talking a lot so he was somewhat distracted and Brooklynn took full advantage, grabbing handful after handful to feed the fish.

After the tour we got our poles and got started. Since my parents, myself and two of the kids don't even like fish, and Chris wasn't here to cook it, we decided they could only catch the small fish. They were all pretty disappointed they couldn't catch the huge ones. 

Lauren

 Brooklynn kicked back and fishing. 

Tyler was a great helper and helped each of the little girls cast and catch their fish. He'd take the hook out and take care of everything.

 

 When McKenna first caught her fish this was as close as she'd get to touching it. By the end of the day though she decided it wasn't so bad and held it.

 

Tyler and his "little" fish. We told him he could catch one of the medium fish but there were some pretty big ones in there. He kept trying to catch one of those. Unfortunately, there were also some tiny ones in there too and he ended up getting a tiny one. The nice guy only charged us for a small though. Tyler had really wanted to catch the big ones but at $22.50 a pop, for a fish we wouldn't eat, I said NO WAY!

The girls thought watching the fish get cleaned was pretty neat. The guy cleaning them pulled out the heart and let them hold it while it was still beating. We got them all packed up, froze them and brought them all the way back home for Chris to cook. Thanks for a fun day Grandma!