Best of...Where trout are hungry for a hook.

Byline: The Register-Guard

BEST EASY FISHING Alton Baker Park Canoe Canal Where: Alton Baker Park, 100 Day Island Road Limit: Five fish per day How much: Free Where did all those fish come from? When a virus struck the state's Butte Falls Hatchery, trout slated for Rogue River Basin streams had to be released into other waterways; the virus, which does not affect the edibility of the trout, is already present in the Willamette River system How many fish we talking about? The state plans to stock a total of 20,000 fish ranging from 10 inches to 13 inches in length; releases will occur weekly through the third week in September

When it comes to fishing, Team Best of ... is like a Ritalin kid at a chess tournament. We just don't have the patience.

Now, if only there were a fishing spot right out the back door - one that didn't require a long drive or bushwhacking through a thicket of blackberries - a place that made fishing easy for dunderheads like us, and all but guaranteed we'd come away with something on the end of our hook. Something other than a mossy twig, that is.

We're imagining the kind of place where Opie Taylor used to fish before he was Richie Cunningham or the director of a film about a self-flagellating albino killer monk that one critic called "a jumbled, joyless affair that neither entertains nor enlightens." A basic fishing hole, one that your kid can ride his bike to, drop a worm in the water and come home a winner.

We think we've found the perfect summer fishing spot. It's not the nude beach on the Willamette (that's for another Best of ...), and it isn't the rocks beneath Hayden Bridge (too much splashing going on there).

We did like the spot across from Roaring Rapids Pizza (if the fishing's bad, the pizza and beer are always good). And we liked the location beneath the dam at Dexter Lake (described by one fisherman as "the closest you'll find to combat fishing outside of Alaska'). But neither offered the kind of lazy ambiance we envisioned.

We found what we were looking for smack dab in the heart of the city at Alton Baker Park, where it's summertime and the fishing's easy. It's all thanks to the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, which has generously stocked the canoe canal with thousands of rainbow trout and will continue to do so for a few weeks.

Fishing here, as one angler put it, is like shooting fish in a barrel. (Don't get any ideas. Discharging a firearm in city limits was still illegal last time we checked, and besides, you'll catch more here with a plain old hook and some PowerBait.)

In the span of 10 minutes, we saw at least three anglers pull silvery trout out of the water. The most active spot appeared to be near the small bridge at the Ken Nielsen Garden, where the canal dumps into the duck pond. One young fisherdude with a farmer's tan and a cigarette in his mouth had a whole bucket of flopping fish and continued to pull them out of the spillway one after the other.

So maybe idyllic isn't the best way to describe this particular spot, but you can escape the secondhand smoke and concrete by strolling farther down the banks of the canal toward the canoe rental shack. It was here where we spotted a young fishergirl in training.

She carried a bright pink rod and couldn't have been more than 4 years old. She was joined by her father and seemed to epitomize what this equal opportunity spot is all about.

"We're fishing," she said to a neighboring woman with a folding chair and a khaki vest.

"Did you catch any?" the other angler inquired.

"We catched two," she said, beaming proudly.

Best of ... has a levelwind oscillating spool and a 3.4:1 power gear ratio. For the trophy Best ofs ... go to www.registerguard.com/bestof.