Spring Breaking at Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center

ATHENS, Texas—Families looking for a place to have an inexpensive, rewarding family vacation during spring break need look no farther than the Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center in Athens.

TFFC offers free fishing with no license, bait, tackle or experience required, and from March 7 until the end of rainbow trout season in late April, visitors can harvest rainbow trout for free. Daily limit is five trout per person. Anyone wishing to harvest trout should bring an ice chest and ice. Neither is available at TFFC.

Visitors will also want to check out the center's 300,000 gallons of aquaria featuring native Texas fish, including black bullhead catfish, grass pickerel, lake chubsucker, freshwater drum and white bass, along with sunfish, gar and crappie.

Plans are also being made to display a 15.45-pound behemoth largemouth bass caught January 21 from Choke Canyon Reservoir by Brad Bookmyer of Leander. That fish currently ranks No. 41 on the list of 50 largest bass ever caught in Texas.

Weekdays at 11:00 a.m., Saturday at 11:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m., and Sundays at 2:00 p.m. a diver hand-feeds the fish in the tank while discussing their biology and behavior. Visitors can ask questions of the diver through a live underwater link.

After the dive show, visitors can take a tram tour of the hatchery where TFFC annually raises two to three million largemouth bass for stocking into public waters. One of those fish just may grow up to be the new state or world record. You can say, "I knew her when she was just a fingerling." And yes, it will be a she. Come to TFFC to find out why.

Families with youngsters needing to work off some energy will want to disembark the tram at the far end of the hatchery and walk back along the ADA-compliant Wetlands Trail. This 0.8-mile trail features interpretive exhibits on the flora and fauna (that's the birds and the bees and the flowers and the trees), a working bee-hive with seethrough walls, a wildflower area and scads of turtles in the ponds.

If you should happen to visit during a spring shower, there's lots to see inside the Visitor Center. All the aquaria can be viewed from a covered walkway, and indoor exhibits include a fishing museum, a freshwater fishing hall of fame and displays showing how fish are spawned and raised.

All this is yours for the price of admission: $5.50 for adults, $4.50 for seniors, and $3.50 for children ages 4 to 12. For more information, call (903) 676-2277 or visit www.tpwd.state.tx.us/tffc.

TFFC is located just 75 miles southeast of Dallas, 100 miles east of Waco and 125 miles north of Bryan/ College Station. That makes it a one-tank round trip for 4 or 5 million of you.

It would be best if you all did not show up on the same day.