Kids learn about cycle of life at Floyd Lamb park

About a dozen fifth-graders sang “Bye- bye trout” to the tune of “Bye Bye Love” as they released the minuscule, month-old fish into a Floyd Lamb State Park pond on a beautiful Saturday morning.

It was all part of an ongoing science project that teaches kids about the cycle of life — brought to you by Edythe and Katz elementary schools through the Nevada Department of Fish and Wildlife Service.

“Bye-bye trout,” they sang. “Bye-bye aquatic friends. We hope we’ll see you again. When you’re swimmin’ down the stream.”

The trout’s chances of survival aren’t that great — not because there were at least a half-dozen ducks quacking near shore at the time of their release, but because the strain isn’t one of the healthier ones, noted Heather Vasquez, the fifth- grade teacher.

Of the original 300 trout eggs that were shipped to the schools from a Montana fishery a month ago, she said, only 10 survived the six-week incubation period.

And yet Vasquez said the purpose of Saturday’s field trip wasn’t so much to restock the pond at the state park as it was to give the children a hands-on experience with the trout’s life cycle, which is not too different from that of the salmon.

As a result, the children learned a host of interesting facts, among them that the fish have a keen sense of smell, have great head-on vision, eat virtually anything that’s edible, and generally live seven years before they lay eggs and die.

One thing is for certain: they are not indigenous to landlocked ponds in state parks. Trout are found mostly in rivers, and if you find them in any sort of lake — say, Lake Mead — chances are they’ve been stocked or found their way in through the front door that is the Colorado River.

But despite the odds against these little fellas, the students are holding out hope all the same.

Nestor Ixta, 11, and pal Angel Rodriguez, 11, said they hope the fish would live to a ripe old age. “It was fun to watch them grow,” Ixta said.

“They gotta swim away from the ducks,” Rodriguez said.

Contact reporter Tom Ragan at tragan@reviewjournal.com or 702-224-5512.