For all of you outdoor sports fans the time you have been waiting for is here and it will be a cold start to the season. Yes, I am talking about trout season. It will be a cold start to the season this year. For me I don’t just go out because it is opening day, I sort of drifted away from all of that hype etc. many years ago. It seems crazy to get up at the crack of dawn, put on extra clothes just to go out to a local stream where there will be so many people standing so close to each other that you can’t even cast your line. There are very few native wild trout in the streams anymore that all you are going to catch, if you are lucky, are a couple of farm raised fish dumped into the stream just the day before the season opens. These fish are used to being fed and are hungry so catching them on a line with bait is an easy task. After only a couple of hours of getting hooked by someone else’s bait and hook, the stocked fish are completed fished out. Hopefully, a couple will be left so someone can come around and catch them later on in the season, but it’s not very likely.
I have walked the entire length of some of these stocked streams a day or two or even a week after opening day just to find that I did not come across one trout. What’s the fun in that? I feel anyone can go to a hatchery and drop a line in and walk away with a fish in about five minutes. It’s the same way I feel about fishing in a stream a day after five hundred fish are dumped in. To me, the real skill in trout fishing would be to go to a far out in the woods or mountain stream that has never been stocked and fish for native trout. Unfortunately, not too many of these places seem to exist anymore. They are getting harder and harder to find these days. You can also look at this in another way. It is just good for your physical and mental well-being to get out and enjoy nature after being in the house all winter long. Either way, it is a sign that spring has indeed arrived. Good luck on your fishing adventure, and I hope to see some of you out and about our local streams.