Magic Day

"Let's get going, Rich," Dad urged. "We want to get to the creek before 5 a.m.," he said on the opening day of trout season when I was about 10 years old. (I'm 72 now.) "The fish bite best for the first hour."

Though it was dark when we arrived, quite a few anglers had already staked out spots along the creek. Dad and I walked downstream, found a pool, and rigged up. We had dug our worms prior to the season and had stored them in a container filled with Buss Bedding, which kept them healthy. At 5, we plunked our baits into the pool. I don't remember if this was one of the mornings when we caught only one or two stocked trout or one when we caught our limits (eight trout at the time). But, we were there, as we were in succeeding years when the opening hour had been pushed back to 8 a.m. Even after the local paper mill started having problems and Dad had to transfer to Luke, Md., to work, we still managed to fish the trout opener together until I graduated from high school in 1967 and went to college. That was also the time when I began to learn to fly-fish for trout, becoming such a fanatic that I chose to fish only with flies, even during the opening day. I was learning that fly-fishing improved dramatically as the season progressed, though the opening day was still the magic portal to the season's quest for trout.

The opening day of trout season is still a magic day for enthusiastic sportsmen. I have often written that more sportsmen are in the outdoors on the trout opener than there are on any other day of the year. Even with many sportsmen taking their young anglers to stocked streams on the annual Mentored Youth Day for trout the previous Saturday, families of trout fishermen crowd stocked trout waters on the trout opener, no matter what the weather.

Around here, Canoe Lake, which has been open to catch-and-release fishing since it was stocked in early March, and Canoe Creek, its feeder stream, are probably the most popular fishing spots for opening day anglers. Other good bets for Cove fishermen include lovely Yellow Creek and upper Clover Creek, both which have received stockings of hatchery-reared trout. Various baits, lures and flies can attract these trout.

I'll be out there somewhere on April 2, maybe not fishing till later in the day, but enjoying the excitement of the opening day of trout season.