From tonight’s Post Bulletin:
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Foster-Arend yields 20-inch trout
3/22/2007 12:38:16 PM
By John Weiss
The Post-Bulletin
In Saturday’s blinding sunshine, anglers could see that the ice around the edge of the pond at Foster Arend Park was iffy at best, thin at worst.
On the other hand, they knew rainbow trout should be biting.
The lure of big trout easily won out.
Anglers used the fishing pier to get to solid ice, and they were rewarded with some trout. Big trout, some 20 inches or longer, all stocked by the Department of Natural Resources. Many anglers kept some for the frying pan; others put them back.
In future years, chances of catching trout are going to be even better. The DNR had been stocking about 7,000 trout annually, mostly rainbows with a few brown and brook trout, said Kevin Cook, a DNR fisheries specialist at Crystal Springs Hatchery, which raises and stocks those fish.
In the future, the number of trout will be increased to about 10,000, all of them at least 14 inches long — big enough to keep and eat. A few are brood stock up to 24 inches long. The DNR tries to stock every few weeks.
They aren’t there to grow and spawn, they’re there to be caught, he said. “We are encouraging people to catch them and keep them,” he said. It’s one of the few places in the region that is open for trout year-round and is stocked.
That emphasis on stocking trout is a big change from when the city first bought land for the park in north Rochester more than 20 years ago. At first, the idea was to make it an easy place for youths and adults to get to. “It just happened to be suitable for trout to survive year-round,” said DNR fisheries manager Steve Klotz.
The DNR soon found that many adults loved the pond, and the idea of managing the area primarily for youths and the elderly was abandoned. It’s worked out well. “It’s a really neat resource to have right in the middle of Rochester,” which doesn’t have a lot of good fishing water, Klotz said.
If the DNR found more such places where it could stock trout for put-and-take fishing, it would be happy to put in some fish, he said.
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Looks like the DNR will increase stocking from 7,000 per year to 10,000 with all 14 inch and larger trout. Should make for good fishing and lots of fun catching those bigger trout! 
