Remembering Opening Day

This is a story I wrote 15 years ago.  It took place in the spring of 2001 as I was first beginning to fish for trout.  In fact, my parents still hadn't moved down from the north-land yet, so I was venturing into unknown territory without the direction of my Dad, who had started me in on the obsession a few years prior.  On those father/son adventures I fished the small headwater streams of Northern Michigan.  Now on my own, I was gathering whatever knowledge, equipment, and ethics I could muster; before heading out and learning first-hand both how to catch a trout, and what to do when I did.  It is an education that has come through mistakes, disappointments, and triumphs while spending time in the water.  It is an education that is continually being honed through experience.

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            I’ve often heard stories about the deer camps of the past.  Stepping back in time, I picture a rustic cabin amongst towering trees, as leaves rustle in the fall breezes.  Old fields extend beyond the forest, now filling in with sumac and young sugar maples.  As darkness falls, the windows glow from the soft lights within.  Perhaps there is electricity, but more often than not the glow comes from that of the Coleman lanterns hanging from the pole beam rafters above.  There is a distinct smell in the small enclosure.  It is that of white gas, wood smoke, dinner, from earlier in the evening, and now the added scent of gun oil.  Men are gathered around the one room shelter.  One or two are finishing up the dishes, the rest are sitting in chairs at the table near the stone fireplace, or on the bottom bunks extending from the sidewall.  The conversation is simple and easy.  They laugh.  They work in preparation.  They anticipate.    I have never been a part of the nostalgia that accompanies deer camp; yet, the anticipation that men in that situation must feel is something very real to me.  The opening day of trout season is at hand.

            I have gone through all of my supplies.  My pole is laid out next to my waders and net.  The vest, once belonging to my great uncle, is supplied with the essentials.  So many little pockets exist, like secret fishing holes themselves.  One of them keeps my new license complete with a trout stamp.  Another contains a small plastic box that keeps my various spinners separated and organized.  It does not hold many, but it holds enough.  It holds my favorites.  My hat, stained and several years old, is like an old friend next to my hiking boots.  My jeans, with a shirt and sweatshirt, lay beside my dresser that displays the clock now set for the early morning.  I wait in anticipation.

            I wish my dad were here.  I feel like I must live up to a tradition of the generations as they prepared for the opening day of some season or another.  I feel that way because I want to.  It is my link to them.  Due to either death or distance, the experience must be a solo.  I will carry them in my heart.  I will talk to them with each cast.  Today is the opening day of trout season.  Today I will go forth alone.  I have fished brook trout in the small streams of my beloved boyhood, and last fall I had a small taste of trout fishing in the area I live now.  Each trip has been special.  Each trip has been memorable.  Never have I fished on opening day.  I wait in anticipation.

            At the sound of the clock/radio I wrestle my head from the pillow.  Pulling my clothes on, I kiss my wife goodbye, and go out to the kitchen.  I only have one thing left to do.  I lay out some slices of bread to make a sandwich.  Beside it I lay a banana; the water was already in a sports bottle and hip pack.  It will do for a light lunch.  This is all done in the low light of the florescent bulbs under the counter tops.  It seems too drastic to turn the main lights on.  For breakfast I have a piece of toast with grape jelly and a small bowl of cereal.  Standing beside the counter, I eat.  I would feel too confined right now to sit at the dining room table.

            As I pick up my stuff and head out to the garage I am surprised at how warm and balmy it is.  It is still pitch black out, but the warm weather promised from the southwest is well on its way.  The full moon hides behind a haze in the western sky.  I am surprised that the robins are already calling out.  The early bird may indeed get the worm. 

            Inside the van the air is cool and still.  It is refreshing.  The lights stand out brilliantly on the dash as I start the vehicle and back out of the driveway.  The rest of the world seems to be fast asleep.  I listen to one song on the CD already in the stereo and then I put in a soundtrack from one of my favorite movies.  It’s instrumental and it’s adventurous.  If ever music could be dubbed in, to follow a person’s life, this would be the one that I would want for me.  It’s my “Theme CD”. 

            I can hardly see out of the window due to the moisture.  The defroster doesn’t even touch it.  It is then that I realize that it is on the outside, and by using the windshield wipers the world is instantly revealed, albeit dark and foggy.  As I drive, I am amused by the way the moon flits and flirts through the hazy clouds outside of my driver’s side window. 

            Once I have parked in the deserted, gravel lot I take a few minutes to wait for the suns rays to appear while reading the fishing guide with a dome light on.  Eagerness then pushes me onward as I emerge from the van and gather my equipment together.  The extra things that I have are pushed down into one of the legs in my waders before I fling them over my shoulder and grab my pole.  It is a twenty-minute trek to the part of the stream that I want to begin at.  The cardinals are beginning to call as a turkey gobbles on the ridge to my right. 

            As I traverse along the trails I step through a lowland marsh before climbing a hill to enter a sacred forest of giant white pines.  The breezes of the early morning sunrise are beginning to stir and rustle the dried grasses and leaves of last fall.  Descending down through some fields, beside some deer runs, I spook a wary white tail up ahead of me.  She snorts and whistles in apparent alarm at my presence.

            Only a week ago I had been in this same area looking for deer antler sheds with my dad during a spring break trip my parents had made to visit us.  He will be familiar with this area when I tell him where I have gone today.  I walk beside the gigantic monarch of an oak tree before stopping at the water’s edge.  Here the dancing water ripples over rock washed down from the canyon further upstream.  In the growing light I fumble with the four-pound line on my lightweight, open-faced reel as I tie on my favorite Panther Martin spinner that is only 1/32 in size.  Next I pull on my waders and stick my boots into the back end of them.  I don’t have any suspenders, so instead I use an old belt to keep the waders up.  My net drags along behind me, tied to the same belt.

            For the next few minutes I practice flipping the lure into the first couple of pools.  I have one attempted strike in that amount of time before I neatly wrap my line and lure into the overhanging branches of a green ash tree that hugs the bank.  Climbing up out of the water, I survey the situation before remembering that this is my only lure of that color, and it is brand new.  That is thought enough before coming to the decision that I am going after it.  So goes an early morning fishing trip.  Most successful trips involve loosing lures, or tangling yourself into various brambles and tag alder at least half of the time anyway.  Hopefully this would be no different.

            Laying my pole on the bank I heave a leg up on some exposed roots before pushing off into a barrel roll onto my side.  Kneeling in the grass I knew, with deep breaths, that I was committed now.  The next event in the obstacle course involved the actual climbing of the tree with the waders on.  With a quick glance around I grab a hold of some branches at eye level, and scramble upward until I am lodged in the crotch of the tree eight to ten feet up.  It is some spectacle to behold I’m sure as I reach out for the branch, bend it towards me, and break off the culprit twig all while hanging out over the water below in full fishing regalia.

            For the next hundred feet I toss the lure into various holes along the banks and bends.  Soon I reach a point where the water jams into a pile of logs and almost doubles back on itself in about a forty-five degree angle.  I smile in anticipation as the rising sun begins to dance on the waters surface.  Conservatively I begin tossing the spinner, so that the current will carry it just under the submerged tree trunks.  I am not pleased with where I am placing it, however, and realize that I need to inch forward a bit and flip it a little more daringly.  Just as I am doing so, a wood duck flew in from upstream.  I freeze as it lands in the little pool that forms in front of the very log jam that I am fishing at.  In fact, it swims over the very place I am trying to cast my spinner.  Will its presence scare any fish that are lurking there?  Does it know I am standing close to it, merely twenty feet away?  Of course it does, but I do not move a muscle.  The moment is too precious.  The feather coloring is brilliant, and the markings contrast, particularly around its head.  It makes unusual peeping sounds while paddling in place.  Slowly it begins swimming upstream against the current until it is able to walk on the rocky bottom.  It slips and is washed back down into the pool, before making the attempt again.  This time it succeeds in reaching another pool at which time it takes flight and leaves all together.  It is enjoyable to be in the company of such a unique bird who is typically quite wary. 

            Gathering my wits I now focus again on how to get my lure in the exact vicinity that the wood duck has just been.  Swinging the spinner to and fro as a pendulum, with excess line in my left hand, I flip to the current of choice.  It lands close to where I want it, but not exactly.  I begin reeling it in while thinking about how I can do it better on the next cast when suddenly I see a flash and get a hit.  My pole bends wildly as the line races under the logs and throughout the pool.  Slowly I gain on the fish until I am able to scoop it into the landing net.  I can’t believe something this big, can live in this small stream.  My hands are shaking.  This is what I have dreamed of.  I can’t have possibly imagined anything better.  If I thought the wood duck had been beautiful, the markings on the trout are incredible.  Carefully I extract the hook while kneeling at the water’s edge.  The fish is a brown trout, born and raised in these cool waters, and now measuring at fifteen inches.  It will be my first opening day trophy. 

Later @ home with The Brown

            Putting the fish into the recesses of my vest I turned the bend and now began casting up along the bank.  Here a fallen tree, coupled with exposed roots, overhangs the water.  Upon the third or fourth cast I again have a hit.  As the trout races back and forth in front of me I try to keep the tip up and keep it from getting tangled in the debris along the bank.  I can hardly believe it.  I have two good, sized browns, practically back to back, and it is only 7:00.  Netting the trout I turn to the bank behind me and use it as a table to unhook the fish. After measuring it at fifteen and a half inches I ease it back into the clear, cool water, and watch it quickly disappear down stream.  The water has already been kind to me.  I will return the favor.

            The next section of the stream is unusual in that it is straight, deep, and flows with hardly a ripple.  I begin working the water with long casts out ahead of me.  As I move forward I also begin easing my way toward the bank to my right.  Here the hills above cascaded sharply to the waters edge.  Looking ahead, a honeysuckle bush drapes its branches out into the water.  With concentration I flip my lure to a spot I think might carry it under the shaded sanctuary.  What I get is a spinner caught neatly around some branches.  Shaking my head, and staying surprisingly calm, I wade into the hole I am trying to sneak up on so cautiously.  After freeing the line from the branches, I notice from my position that another honeysuckle is just ahead of me, in addition to some rocks from the bank that slope steeply down to the stream’s bottom.  I flip the spinner forward.  It is only a short cast.  I can’t manage much more of a cast the way I am positioned.  Unfortunately nothing hits on my first try.  Perhaps by coming across the stream to free the line I have scared out any trout that are hiding there.  I try again with out any hit.  As I pull the spinner from the water’s surface, however, I look down just in time to see a monster brown trout turn two or three feet in front of me.  I suck in a huge lung full of air.  All I can say is “Wow…Wow”!  That fish made the other two I had caught look like fingerlings.  It had followed my spinner, but it hadn’t had enough space to think and grab on before I had to pull it from the water. 

            Trying not to disturb the scene, I slowly back out down stream.  I cross back through the water and pull myself up onto the bank; using it as a chair, dangling my legs in the water.

As I rest and take in my situation, my spirit laughs.  Pulling the lunch from my vest I eat, and scheme.

            I already have one fish in my pocket.  If I can catch the one that I have just looked eyeball to eyeball with, then I will have to decide whether I keep it or release it.  Other various “if / then” statements run through my mind as I enjoy the growing morning and my lunch.  The winds blow warm and dry under the sun’s rays.  I want to know my possibilities and choices before I try again.

            After thirty minutes have passed, I grab my pole and slide back into the water.  Carefully I begin stepping forward, with my head bent low to the surface.  This time I stay on my side of the stream.  Once I am kitty-corner from the lair of the lunker, I stop and flip my spinner to almost the exact spot that I had stood earlier.  I continue to stay low as I begin reeling it in. 

            The strike that hits my lure is so strong I instantly brace, straighten up and lean back.  I have to, unless I want to take an early morning swim.  It is the same trout.  I will bet my life on it.  No two trout that big will, or can live that close to one another.  If they do, then God help the bait-fish, crayfish, and flies.  They will have no chance. 

            The fish first races fifteen feet down stream.  Doubling back it passes me and goes twenty feet upstream like a hot knife through butter.  My pole is straight up and the tip is straight down.  I let myself breathe and released the word “Wow” through a grin and clenched teeth.  The trout now retraces its path and begins swimming back downstream when my line suddenly screams “uncle” and breaks.  I laugh aloud.  Perhaps I wouldn’t have laughed if I hadn’t been able to catch and keep my first fish, but I had and I did, so anything else I considered extra.  I continue to laugh and repeat the word “Wow”.  What more could I do?

True, it had been too much fish for my line, but that was the point…Too much fish.  That brown trout had been a monster, and although it was the “one that got away”, I didn’t care.  The experience of having three different trout hit one of my favorite lures, and the stories that now went with it, was priceless.   

            With my lure now lost on an age-old fish, and the temperatures rising with the sun, I decide to begin the walk back to the van.  It has been an excellent morning of fishing.  Somewhere my relatives of old are smiling down from heaven above.  It is not simply because I have a nice brown trout in my vest.  It is not simply because I have caught one, released one, or let one get away.  It is not simply because I am fulfilling some ancient prophecy.  The generations are smiling because I have come for the experience itself, in addition to all of those other things.  I experienced the tradition of the “opening day” which brings with it the anticipation, the wonder, and the appreciation of the outdoors.  The fish is in my vest, as the generations are in my heart today.  It is the opening day of trout season.

A memory still captured in my minds-eye