The trout in the swimming pool

Back in the 80’s, my family owned a campground in the Black Hills. I worked there each summer, and so did my friend John. The resort was a shade of its former glory. In the 60’s it had been a full resort, with cabin rentals, a lodge, olympic sized swimming pool, miniature golf, etc… But by the time we bought it, it was just a campground (but that part was still awesome).

That old pool leaked like a sieve (and I think it’s still there, see the rectangle in this satellite photo?). We had to pump gallons of water into it each day. This wasn’t really all that wasteful, because we pumped it out of the creek, and it just leaked back into the groundwater and ended up in the creek again. It made it difficult to chlorinate, however, so we just gave up on that. Also, it was frigid (this is the Black Hills, after all).

There was also a trout fishing pond just east of the pool. Those fish were stupid easy to catch, as they were trained to eat the food pellets we threw in for them. One day Dad caught a trout and on a whim threw it into the old pool. I don’t think the guests swimming in there ever new it was in there with them. All that summer, we’d catch grasshoppers and feed the trout in the pool. Come fall, when we were closing up the place for the winter, we took a fly rod over to the pool and caught the trout — Ate him that night. He had grown into a huge fish! And was much tastier, having fed on bugs and stuff blowing into the pool, rather than the fish pellets the other trout got. (Pellet-fed fish always ended up tasting mealy in comparison to wild fish).