The Trout in the Classroom program at White Mountain Elementary school in Ruidoso, which has had its ups and downs this year, concluded last week with the release of three fish that we think were raised in the 3rd grade classroom of teacher Rachel Lutterman. The 150 kids who witnessed it, along with a tour of a fish hatchery, were squealing and cheering during the whole process, so it must have been a success.
It’s a long story.
A batch of 35 triploid rainbow trout eggs that the New Mexico Game and Fish Department had donated to the school for the second year of the Trout in the Classroom Program (sponsored by Trout Unlimited) were delivered to the school in November. Unfortunately, all of the fish that had hatched died during the holiday break, for reasons still unknown.
The Mescalero Apache hatchery, which has been a great partner in the program, agreed to give the school three juvenile rainbow trout to continue raising in Ms. Lutterman’s classroom. These three fish were thriving until a major power outage cut off electricity to the tank filter, water chiller and oxygenating systems. The outage was intentionally triggered because dangerous winds threatened to knock down more powerlines in the Ruidoso area and start fires that would be disastrous to the mountain community. Two years ago year, if you’ll recall, much of the forest land around Ruidoso and many of the homes in the area were burned in a devastating forest fire.
When teacher Lutterman became concerned about the viability of the fish during the power outage, she asked the Mescalero hatchery if she could rush them the 25 miles south and place them in tanks with their siblings. The hatchery agreed and the three Ruidoso trout were back swimming around in tanks and fish raceways that had been their home three months earlier.
Friday, May 2, was the date scheduled for release of the remaining Ruidoso three, along with about 150 pounds of other fish from the hatchery. To be truthful, we’ll never know if the Ruidoso trout were actually in the batch that was released that day, but in the students minds, I’m sure they were all there swimming around with their rainbow trout buddies.
Prior to the release of the fish, the Mescalero hatchery gave all 150 kids a grand tour of the fish hatchery. As you might expect with just a couple of weeks to go in the school year, a chance to get out of class for the day and a field trip on an activity bus was a really big deal for a bunch of third graders. (My ears still hurt from the the shrieks, laughs, squeals of delight and amplified chatter that the kids offered up during their adventure.)
As a member of Trout Unlimited, I’ve acted as an advisor and facilitator to the Trout in the Classroom program in Ruidoso and now in Silver City. But the majority of this program’s work falls on the dedicated teachers who clearly love their jobs and the students they teach.
My proudest moment for the event was when I was able to rescue a fish that had slipped through a net when they were being loaded into the tank on the back of the truck that was taking them to the release site.
I managed to grab it while it flopped around on the ground, held it up to show to the kids, tossed it in the tank and got a resounding cheer from them. It made my day.
And the smell of a just caught trout on my hands, when I am preparing to release it back into the water, is still one of my favorite scents to this day. I need to go fishing again soon.
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