Opening Day 2014

 

Another opening day has come and gone, and we had a good time participating in the event.  Every year has its similarities and differences.  Like always we got to our opening day spot at 530am with only one other car in the area.  The other car belonged to a man and his son who have been fishing the spot on opening day as long as we have.  The weather was also cool like last year.  I wore a jacket and had gloves on.  I quickly grabbed my minnow pail and got to my lucky, opening day, hole.  At 6am I still did not see anyone else drive in except my brother.  My second cast with a live shiner produced a nice keeper size trout.  I got 3 fish out of that hole in the first 30 minutes.  The rest of the day was very slow.  I ended up with a 4th trout which I released.  Jan got 2 and lost a nice rainbow.  My brother and his friend got nothing.  The big difference this year was the lack of fish.  Most years we have limited by 930am.  I talked to other anglers who were also taking a beating, and here are the excuses i heard: we are bad at fishing, unlucky, river to high, river to cold, poaching, mink population explosion, state did not stock, they all got washed down, and my personal favorite the local kids kept them all because they were off from school last week.  Whatever the case may be, opening day was unusually slow.  We also fished a couple of different spots on a couple of different rivers and noticed the same caliber of action.
   Highlight of the trip was making breakfast sandwiches on a cast iron skillet.  Cooking on cast iron makes everything taste better, and after a tough cool morning of trudging through the woods in pursuit of the hatchery trout we needed it.  In the late afternoon, after a needed nap, we got together at my mom's house and had a nice dinner.  We had hamburgers, hot dogs, and a few trout.  So there you have it.  Opening day was what it should be, fun with family and friends.  Yes, the fishing was tough but we enjoyed it.  Here is a quick video Of the first trout of the day.  I spelled morning wrong on the opening credits, but I am not going to change it, so enjoy.