Grizzly Peak Fly Fishers participates in the California Department of Fish & Wildlife’s Trout in the Classroom program. Trout in the Classroom is a community based program which allows students to experience firsthand the delicate balance needed for animals to survive in aquatic ecosystems. Students engage in course of study which supports the learning experience across curriculum area. This program is run cooperatively by local schools, fishing clubs and government agencies. Our award winning program here at GPFF reaches nearly a thousand school children each year in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Program Outline

We begin this program by building special cold water aquaria that are loaned to schools for their participation in the DFW Trout in The Classroom K­12 program. The DFW gives us fertilized trout eggs that we take to schools where children experience the hatching of their eggs into Alevins and to swimming Fry. Our club members serve as coaches to provide assistance to teachers. We provide documentation on how to set up and run our cold water aquaria. We then train teachers to use our equipment and they teach their students about trout anatomy, what trout eat, where they live and the importance of watershed conservation to trout and the environment. Finally, the children then take their fish and release them into DFW approved local waters.

Documentation

Our GPFF TIC 2022 Documentation includes a list of the aquarium components, how to calibrate the digital thermometer, details on the temperature controller and its operation. It also gives detailed instruction on how the equipment should be cleaned and sterilized. There is also an Excel document that allows a teacher to keep a daily record of temperatures and suggest temperature changes to meet teacher determined hatch and swim-up dates. There is also a tutorial on how to use the Excel program. Lastly, there is a document that gives the engineering drawings for constructing a GPFF cold water aquarium. We normally support around thirty classrooms annually, from south Oakland to Hercules.