Thursday, February 23, 2012

Opening Day






















I'm sitting at my house watching another spring snow shower and planning my weekend fishing trip. I started making a mental list of the things I needed to pick up from the shop like leaders and some new hemostats (mine..uhm... got destroyed), and what flies I need to wrap up before heading out. The whole process got me thinking about what it was like to live in a state with a closed trout season. Here in Colorado, our trout fishing is open all year, but growing up I had to leave my precious trout honey holes alone from September through April. This gave the fishery time to heal and gave the trout peace as they procreated.

My first thought was, "man, I am lucky to be able to fish my trout streams all year", but maybe that isn't the case. When I had an off-season, it gave me time to restock my fly boxes and do the necessary maintenance on my gear. There would be ample time to spend with family and friends doing non fishing related things like tapping maples and searching for morels. Believe it or not, fishing is like everything else in life, it is good to step away from it every once in a while. If you occasionally separate yourself from something, when you get back to it you can appreciate the little things again.

Then there is the anticipation. It starts when you put away the cross country skis or you start your end of season maintenance on your snowmobile. You can feel it in the air. The ice and snow melts and you feel the life of spring coming back. This is when you stash away your spey gear and start tying dry flies. I would start taking the long way home from work so I could drive by my local stream to see how it looked. Then the day would finally arrive. After a night of restless sleep, I would wake up at 4am and make a gut bomb breakfast. Mostly an egg scramble with sausage and jalapenos. The coffee and maple syrup (the real stuff, mind) would settle it down nicely and I would head out.

My spot was a small blue ribbon trout stream in southwest Michigan. No... I wont name it for you, but it wasn't a spot that everybody thought of. Most people would migrate to the more popular streams and fish with the masses. I chose to fish in solitude on a special creek under a canopy of huge maples. On the opener, I would always fish dry flies. Not because the fish were stupid after months of not seeing fisherman, but because opening day deserved to be fished in a certain way. That first sip would be the official start to the trout season, so I always made sure that it was a good one.


___________________________________________________________________

2 comments:

  1. Here in the Ozarks we don't have a closed season either and as much as I love to flyfish in the winter months (less people for one good reason)I would almost like to see one , at least for certain streams that have natural production.
    Aside from the benefit to the trout themselves I too believe that sometimes absence makes things even more special , sometimes the anticipation of a trip is almost as exciting as the trip itself...and sometimes it's more so!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. @highplainsflyfisher - In Michigan, there are lots of rivers that are managed for steelhead and salmon, so even though there are a bunch of trout streams that are simply closed, you would still have places to go swing flies. Some of those waters even have regular trout in them too. They have a pretty good situation over there. As always, Thanks for stopping by.

      Delete