Needham Students Stock Pond for Fishing Derby

300 (roughly) rainbow trout are waiting for Saturday's Fishing Derby, thanks to a seventh grade class who helped them stock the pond Tuesday morning.

Tuesday morning, Pollard seventh graders met Mass. Department of Fish and Game Commissioner Mary Griffin, MassWildlife Chief Fish Culturist Ken Simmons and Needham Park and Recreation Dept. Assistant Director Karen Pierce at the reservoir.

The fish were scooped into buckets two or three at a time, and were carried by students up to the bank of the pond, where they were thrown into the reservoir. The toss stunned some of them, but after a few moments, each fish swam away into its new home.

As soon as the seventh graders finished and filed away, at least one fisherman and his dog started toward the water's edge. 

From the MassWildlife press release: 

This event is part of a program that distributes various species of trout to 500 bodies of water throughout the Commonwealth every year. This spring, DFG’s Division of Fisheries and Wildlife (MassWildlife) will release more than 510,000 trout produced at state-operated hatcheries in Belchertown, Montague, Sandwich, and Sunderland. MassWildlife’s troutstocking effort for 2013 began in mid-March, and trout stocking schedules are updated every Friday through the spring for the convenience of the state’s anglers. For more information, see MassWildlife's fish stocking information web page.