The first lines went arching over the Keney Park pond an hour before noon Sunday, tipped with fluorescent PowerBait, flung by kids in raincoats. Rain dimpled the surface of the pond.
About five minutes after the lines went out, Jose Mendez Molina, 8, began shrieking.
It was Mendez Molina’s first time fishing, but he had on the end of his line a 10-inch rainbow trout that had chosen, fatally, to chomp on the clump of yellow PowerBait a police officer had molded minutes before onto his hook.
Mendez Molina was one of 29 Hartford kids who spent Sunday angling with Hartford police officers and firefighters for a share of the pond’s 400 rainbow trout, deposited Wednesday by the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, or DEEP. The Keney Park pond is one of 14 urban fishing spots stocked and maintained by DEEP.