Opening Day Reflections

It’s been a long winter. A long, cold, snowy winter. A long, cold, snowy, depressing winter. Ice, snow, more ice, more snow, cars coated with salt and dirt, fuel bills, seasonal affective disorder, slush, plowing fees; all the stuff that makes life barely worth living.

So even though spring has been a bit chilly so far, it’s still spring, and after all, this is Connecticut. I mean, despite all the whining that goes on around here, (especially among certain outdoor writers) we’re not a bunch of namby-pamby Floridians. We native New Englanders come from tough stock; we can take it, even if we don’t like it much.

Still, one sure sign that spring is truly on the march is the opening day of trout season, which is coming up Saturday the 16th. The season is already open in more enlightened states such as Rhode Island, but we Connecticut types are expected to wait until the third Saturday in April, and to our credit, most of us do.

When I was growing up in Ashaway, R.I., opening day was one of the three most important days of the year, along with Christmas and the last day of school

But since most of my associates and I were habitual truants anyway, the end of the school year was little more than a rubber-stamp event, and there were always report cards to worry about. It was usually a good day, but not great.

Christmas could also be exciting, but when one takes into account our behavior the rest of the year, there was always considerable Yuletide tension among my crew as to whether or not the dreaded coal and onions would fill our stockings. And let’s not forget the nasty old great-aunts who used the holiday to hand out socks, underwear, and other stuff we really “needed.” Christmas usually turned out OK, but all things considered, I’d assign it second place.

No doubt about it. Opening day was king.

Sometime in the late 1950s, the powers that be at the Rhode Island Division of Fish and Game decided to move the opening bell from sunrise to midnight. It’s hard to tell how or why this decision was reached, other that the fact that the people who made it were government bureaucrats and were probably under pressure to prove that they actually came to work once in a while.

But, as kids, we liked it. The midnight kickoff gave us a rare opportunity to stay up most of the night without having to sneak out of the house.

Our parents demanded that we get a few hours of sleep before heading out, but as might be expected, slumber was impossible while our consciousness was jammed with visions of sparkling brook trout and purple rainbows.

The plan was always the same: Hit the river at midnight, score a few trout, then trudge home and sleep for a few hours before heading back to the river for a day of fishing.

The plan was sound but it never worked, at least for yours truly.

Other than the nuisance chore of unhooking eels, bullheads, and other unappreciated night-prowlers, the midnight session always went well, but thanks to fatigue, the couple hours of sleep was invariably extended to lots of hours of sleep, and the full day of fishing was susequently reduced to few hours in the late afternoon.

There must have been a lot of similar observations from well-connected persons (don’t forget, this is Rhode Island I’m talking about here) because after a few years, the starting time was pushed ahead to 6 a.m.

That seemed to work a whole lot better; it was still difficult to sleep, but not impossible. And a full day of opening day fishing was finally within our grasp.

To tell you the truth, I don’t know what time the season opens nowadays. Nothing short of the false albacore run and a good morning tide is going to get me out of bed at that ungodly hour, and to tell you the truth, I’m less inclined to fish in a crowd than I once was.

I still look forward to opening day as a rite of spring, but I’m happy to let the kids have the fun. They’ll be growing up all too soon.