Back in the days when I was younger (and better looking), I used to fish a lot. These days, I don't have the time or much opportunity to do it. I wanted to do a small fishing event to get my children comfortable to the sport. I would like my children to appreciate where their food comes from (e.g. animals, fish, livestocks). I remembered long ago as a child that there used to be a trout farm up north in Toronto. To my surprised, this trout fishing farm, Burd's Family Fishing, still existed! With the long August weekend, I decided to bring the family to try "luxury" fishing.  Off we go to Burd's Family Fishing!

Service: We were able to go in and out the grounds once we paid for admission in ($5 per person). We were told to keep any trout fish you hook and reel in. Cost for the fish was $10/lb.  If you don't have fishing gear, you can rent it on the premises. Best of all, no fishing licenses were required.

For those who are "inexperienced" at the sport, there were many employees on-hand to help you with bait and to reel in your "catch". When leaving, they were able to clean the fish and package it on ice. 

Atmosphere:
The place isn't too far north from Toronto. Took about 30 minutes from North York via driving. There were ample parking spaces. There was an apple tree providing shade in the parking lot (not a good idea with the apples dropping).

The layout of this fishing farm was very simple. There were two ponds on this acre land. The top level pond had clearer water and had trout fishes from 1-3 pounds. The lower pond level had 1-2 pound trouts and the water was more murky. There were picnic tables scatter across the sides of the ponds with some having trees to shade them. There were 3 additional picnic tables under a wooden roof shed beside the giant water wheel.

There were 4 toilet port a potty stalls on the grounds for washroom access.

Fishing Baits & Rod:
By default, they give you some worms as your baits. I had requested to try some different baits. They offered corn kernels, PowerBaits (fake baits) and fish pellets. The corn kernels worked best when it was thrown in with the fish pellet foods. The fish would get excited and try to eat everything (didn't work with worms). I stuck to the worms and eventually got a fish after a few hours ...

The rod rental was very cheap for $5. Don't expect to much as it was a very simple kid grade casting rod. I had to exchange the rods a few times since the release button was jammed.

Overall, it was a good family experience. Too bad my kids didn't fish much. Would come back next time when older.

My Fish:

my 1.2 lb trout catch

upper pond - you can see the fishes in the water!

upper pond

lower pond

Picture of the lower pond

Storage container for the fishes you catch

Fish pellets