Suckers Abound

Based on news reports and a personal dispatch from a fly-toting friend, Opening Day in New York wasn’t the best of days. The fishing report board from Catskills Flies lists stream conditions as “quite high,” “too dangerous to wade,” and “far too high to wade.” The Delaware, which is the “dangerous” report, is listed at 13K CFS. Yikes.

Here are a few excerpts from newspapers, including a report of anglers taking more suckers than trout:

• Fly fishermen Jessie Tyrrell, of Genoa, and Jason Gawarecki, of Weedsport, were having little luck Tuesday after starting the day at Salmon Creek (which was “real high and muddy”) and arriving at Hemlock Creek in Locke before 11 a.m. Both were using artificial flies.

• “People were catching fish, almost all of them those recently stocked trout.”

• Suckers abound 

• Put-and-take success 

• “Most disappointing, he said, was the discovery a few miles upstream of a half-dozen recently stocked trout that been swept into a streamside meadow by rising creek waters and had apparently perished when the waters receded. “

I read through some of those stories and felt a twinge of jealousy for about a split-second; that is until I remember that Opening Day is state of mind and my season opened at around 12:01 a.m. Jan. 1.

Happy Opener

Happy opening day to all New York anglers out on the water today. I am stuck in a Madison Avenue office building, procrastinating from real work by reading online coverage of the great start the Mets had yesterday.

New Jersey opens on Saturday. I’ll probably avoid that too. Nothing personal to my fellow anglers, but I never really got into the mystique of “opening day,” probably because I grew up in Jersey with those official-looking “Trout Stocked Waters” posters stapled to trees for the first two weeks of the season. The trout were usually gone by late April.

There’s nothing as sad as a put-and-take fishery.

Anyway, opening day seems like an unnecessary point of distinction. I like the idea of fishing anywhere, anytime whenever you want.

Tight lines to all for the new season.