Trout can have an opening day too

By many a fisherman’s calendar, April 1 marks the start of the season. “Opening day,” they call it in those trout-stocked states that continue to regulate when, as well as where, an angler can rig up a rod and celebrate the season with a ceremonial first pitch to the fish.

I grew up in such a state, and although I spent far more time dangling worms in front of panfish or throwing lures into the cattails of the bass pond behind our house, the idea of an opening day of trout season always held exceptional intrigue. As a kid, the dawn of trout season seemed as magical as Christmas morning. With the benefit of hindsight, I realize they got it right with April Fools’ Day.

For my brother and me, opening day meant an annual pilgrimage to a spot we only ever knew as Sugar Hollow, or really Sugar Holler, until we were old enough to decipher the local vernacular. We hopped out of the family wagon and dutifully hiked upstream past the first few crowded pools, opened a fresh can of corn and strung a couple kernels onto a barbed Eagle Claw before dropping the hooks into a different crowded pool as the blank stares of 10-inch hatchery trout alternated between us and the bright yellow bait.

I can’t say with any certainty that I ever caught one of those pitiful little stockers, but that never stopped us from returning the following year or the one after that, along with all those other once-a-year fishermen who never seemed to be there on the rare occasion we could convince someone with a driver’s license to chauffeur us up the holler twice.

It wasn’t until after my 18th birthday and the requisite years of organized sports that I convinced my dad to buy me a fly rod, whereupon I might begin my transition into a more mature method of wasting time. Although I had no idea how to fly-fish, I bought an Adams, a Pheasant Tail and a San JuanWorm from a shop I found in the phone book, drove over the mountain and hiked to a little stream I’d heard about and accidentally reeled in a fish. After that, I made it my mission to figure out how to catch trout on purpose, getting serious to the point of moving to the banks of the Eagle River before anyone here in Colorado ever heard of those other Rockies or anything resembling opening day.

While Colorado enjoys a yearround fishing season, there’s still a part of my metabolism that is undeniably energized by a desire to be out on the water around this time of the year, an internal alarm clock chirping with the folly of youth and spring and tradition that exists more in my mind than any reality. The sensation is as arbitrary as opening day itself, based less on the unpredictable quality of the fishing conditions or insect hatches than on the practical pattern of the calendar.

Even as I stare like a stocked trout at another spring snowstorm piling up outside the panes of my personal holding tank, I’m thinking, “I really should go fishing.” Then I check my calendar, and the reality that at best I’ll catch a runny nose, before amending the thought to “Tomorrow.”

Instead, I’ll turn to the online chatter of the other minor-leaguers eager for another opening day. Most of us have been out a few times already this calendar year, but with the April 1 renewal requirement of our annual fishing licenses, suddenly we have a whole new outlook on the season. The fishing may have been slow so far at the local stream or pond, but like those humbling trips to Sugar Holler, that was merely practice.

Anticipation mounts as ice melts and streams gurgle back to life. Fish begin spring routines of their own, whether staging for the spawn, moving into the shallows or chasing down food as the water begins to warm. We check our gear, replace our lines and replenish dwindling stocks of lures. A new season is upon us and optimism abounds. Alive with hope and expectation, we’re all still April fools.