Mountain Springs Trout Park, Highlandville, Missouri

Sunday afternoon, we drove down to Highlandville to do a little fishing at Mountain Springs Trout Park. Some friends of our had told us about how easy it was for kids to fish there and it sounded like a good experience for our daughter, Gwen.

Gwen loves to fish, but lacks much of an attention span, so this place was perfect. In little to no time, we'd eaten some lunch and caught two rainbow trout. The first one Gwen caught was 1.5 pounds, but the second, a monster of a trout, was 6 pounds. She caught the first on her little SpongeBob rod and the huge lunker on her cane pole that I made out of river cane from a hiking trip in Arkansas last year.

It was a great place to take a kid fishing. You're guaranteed to catch something and fairly quick.

We had so much fish that we traded one huge fillet with a neighbor for a bottle of wine and grilled the second. Putting the smaller fish in the freezer for later. I grilled the fillet with olive oil, salt, pepper, rosemary, thyme, garlic, onion, shallots and lemon. Gwen loved it. My wife Abby even tried it and she hates fish more than anyone I've ever known.