Sometimes you need to stack the odds. You can hook a kid on the sport of fishing at the Cold Spring Harbor Fish Hatchery & Aquarium, where there's a high likelihood your little one won't go home empty-handed. "This is really designed for someone who's never caught a fish before," says Steve DeSimone, hatchery director. "It's not quite shooting fish in a barrel, but it's as close as you can get."
Each week, the hatchery stocks a small pond with about 200 adult rainbow and brook trout from 11 to 16 inches long, and visitors fish from a wood dock hugging the perimeter of the pond. As many as 12 families can fish at once, at numbered spots. "My son had a great time. We caught two fish. We brought them home; his grandmother ate them," says Jack Hourigan, 39, a residence manager from Manhattan who experienced the fish hatchery one recent Saturday with Jack, 4, and Jack's grandfather, Nigel Bennett of Queen Here's what parents need to know when visiting the fish hatchery: _ Get there a bit early. "We don't take reservations. It's on a first-come-first-served basis," DeSimone says. While sessions don't usually sell out, they can fill up on popular summer days, he says.
_ You may get messy. "Don't wear your Sunday whites," DeSimone says. The fish might bleed when caught.
